


Back to the Future

by gwendee



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Alternate Universe, College, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Family Dynamics, Fluff and Humor, I don't know what else to say, M/M, Mild Established Karushuu, Other, Post-Canon, Slightly Illegal Activities, The Author Regrets Nothing, This Fic Exudes Chaotic Energy, This Fic is Absolute Nonsense, Time Travel, back to the future - Freeform, messing with time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 34,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22240894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: Gakushuu's made many flawed decisions in his life that brought him to this moment. Choosing to attend college at his parents' Alma Mater was one, rushing his thesis intoxicated was another. Now he's stuck in the year 1995 with nothing but the notes High-Gakushuu wrote for him in crayon, credit cards for bank accounts that have yet to exist, and worst of all, he's found himself accommodation for his unplanned stay - a roommate, which just so happens to be named Gakuhou Asano.A perfect 4.0 GPA isn't worth all of this.Or: Gakushuu becomes his father's college roommate.
Relationships: Asano Gakuhou & Asano Gakushuu, Asano Gakuhou/Original Character(s), Asano Gakushuu & Original Character(s), Background Akabane Karma/Asano Gakushuu
Comments: 658
Kudos: 441





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yall
> 
> I've gone insane
> 
> Welcome to my next multichapter fic! I brought this stupid idea up once upon a time and today I have decided to make it a reality. Hi again to everyone who's read my fics before, hello to everyone who clicked on this for the first time going "what the fuck is this girl on about", neither of you know what to expect, so hope you'll come on in and enjoy the ride!

**2022**

Gakushuu is going to be a college dropout.

"I don't need to do this," Gakushuu mumbles to himself like it's going to be true the more he repeats it. In front of him are bits and pieces of his latest project, his thesis and scholarship balancing on these wires and circuitry on his desk, threatening to upend all his work for the past year.

"I'm a business student," Gakushuu says, "I had prospects. I don't need to be here." And he does, but he is. If Gakushuu could go back in time, he would smack his younger self in the face. "I should just take two degrees in business and electrical engineering," Gakushuu parrots in a stupid falsetto of his own voice, there's no one around him to hear him ridicule himself anyways. "How hard could it be? It makes sense to run a tech startup with both a business and an engineering degree, right? You can take after both your parents!"

"Bullshit," Gakushuu says. "You can't handle shit." He jabs an accusing finger at his own reflection on the table, who glares back with equal ferocity. If he was to be fair Gakushuu would say he's a little hard on himself, he's been acing his classes thus far and keeping a stellar GPA, but setting aside his engineering thesis for his business dissertation is coming to bite him in the ass. He runs his hands through his hair and stares again at the mess of parts on his table.

"I should do something else," Gakushuu says. He pauses. "I should make tea."

He draws a cup on his notes, with a little tea bag label sticking out the side of it, and snickers to himself. He draws little steam squiggles wafting from the cup. Next to it is a diagram of the Gakushuu’s thesis project. It was, theoretically, perfect and innovative and revolutionary, but putting it on his workstation showed him that he was simply recreating a completely ordinary project that had been done hundreds of times before. 

Sure, he wouldn't fail, and if he twisted his words enough he might scrape past with a B, but his professors were surely smart enough to catch all the crap he would be writing. He wouldn't get an A. Gakushuu chews on his lower lip.

"A time machine to smack my younger self for choosing this ridiculous career path," Gakushuu says. 

He pauses. Looks at the mess of parts on his table, at his scratchpad, at the drawing of tea. He stands up and makes himself a cup of green tea in the kitchenette - something nice and Japanese, he may be a little homesick, not that he'd admit - and then sits back down, and nibbles on the end of his pen. A terrible habit.

"Fuck it," Gakushuu says. Theoretical time travel. The most brilliant theses were always the riskiest ones, anyways.

The Feasibility and Logistics of Nonlinear Time Travel is drafted in a week and a half. It's 53 pages long, written in a mixture of lined paper, dotted paper and what seems to be some art student's sketchbooks with considerable effort taken to write around the doodles. It's stained at the edges with tea and coffee and powdered sugar, bound together with binder clips, smells faintly of cocoa butter and avocado.

"I'm dropping out of college," Gakushuu says.

"You are not dropping out of college," Karma says, with as much affection as one could treat a stray dog with through the laptop screen. He has a book open in his lap and Gakushuu can see not only highlighting but neat annotations within the margins. Someone between the two of them has their life together and never once did Gakushuu imagine that person wasn't him.

"I haven't slept in 3 days," Gakushuu says. "I'm on so much caffeine I could die. I took acid yesterday and drew half my circuit diagrams in crayon."

Karma scrutinizes him from his side of the screen. "Take a shower," he says, with the voice Gakushuu could never argue with no matter how much he tried to. "A long, hot one. Then sleep for at least 12 hours." 

"Kay," Gakushuu says obediently. His first instinct, finishing his last full stop, had been to instantly call Karma and rant about his life. Timezones were inappropriate for frequent correspondence but it was 3 in the morning for Gakushuu, anyways, so sometime afternoon for Karma. He's sleep deprived but soon he's sleep deprived and clean, and finds himself snuggled up to his bolster and falling asleep to Karma's voice in his ear.

When Gakushuu wakes up, it's 1 in the afternoon the next day and food seemed like the world's best idea. After that his thesis started seeming like the world's worst, even if three days ago he'd been high out of his mind and euphoric over the plausibility of drop-kicking his overambitious 18 year old self on the face. Now it seems out of a science fiction novel that even a publisher would reject, and even the crayons he used was subpar. Bright yellows on white? Navy blue on dark construction paper? High Gakushuu loved to fuck with him.

Sober Gakushuu wished he had hindsight. He stuffs his crappy thesis into his bag and heads back over to the labs, to see that yet again no one else is here - of course not, everyone normal and taking single degrees are out enjoying summer break, not rushing their final year projects for both their majors. He squints at the mess on his desk, spilling over to his two neighbors' who, from what he could remember, were in touristy Hollywood trying to get a glimpse of Angelina Jolie's backyard and at his girlfriend's in Ohio respectively. Gakushuu sifts through the mess, sorts out the trash from the possibly-legit notes and from...whatever that was... another mess of circuitry that didn't look like Gakushuu's abandoned project nor anyone else's leftovers, which means either someone had been breaking in and leaving miscellaneous electronic parts at his desk or high-Gakushuu had brilliant ideas of his own and attempted to implement them.

Gakushuu sighs. He had a total blackout, as far as he knew - he'd popped the pills in the evening two days ago to pull an all nighter and came to in his own dorm room yesterday, a stack of papers on his desk marked COMPLETED with his own shitty handwriting in red pen. Technically while he didn't remember a thing, he got the job done. He hadn't had the courage to read it from cover to cover yet, but he'll have to get around to it.

For now he picks up high-Gakushuu's electronic creation. It's hastily duct-taped together, but it doesn't fall apart when Gakushuu unpeels it, so he wonders about the secondary aesthetics of the tape. It's a little device of some sort and a quick scan of the area drops no possible hints so as to what it might be, Gakushuu flips through his thesis but nothing comes up. 

"Huh," Gakushuu says. He adjusts his bag and sits back down. "Lets see what you got, high-me," he says, and flicks the one switch the device offers.

Predictably, nothing happens. Gakushuu snorts and turns it over in his arms. "At least you look like I had fun," he murmurs, but it doesn't inspire any confidence in the quality of the rest of his work. He balances the papers on a knee the device on another, wonders if he should make himself another cup of tea, flips a page, and immediately passes out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miss me? It's okay if you didn't. I'm going to be back with pretty regular updates, hopefully daily (for this fic at least) for now. Yay?

**????**

“-hou? Gakuhou?”

Gakushuu’s head hurts, he feels like something has exploded in his skull. The worst migraine he’s had is barely comparable, why is it so bright? Where the fuck is he?”

“Dad?”

“-doesn’t sound like him,” mumble, mumble.

Ugh. Gakushuu throws an arm over his face, which is a considerable effort considering his limbs feel like cooked spaghetti. His brain feels like spaghetti. Did his entire body just get replaced by pasta, and is that why he felt like he was currently slow cooking? He peeks an eye out to see several people hovering around him, chattering between them. He feels like a snack - and not in the good way - watching people watch him from the tiny window through the microwave. 

Gakushuu gets up and stretches - god, he aches everywhere. The three people are staring at him with varying amounts of concern and amusement, and Gakushuu stares back. They feel off, somehow. He's on a park bench in the middle of campus. Why was he on a park bench again? The three - Gakushuu still can't place them - are still staring. One of them waves, another is holding that device high-Gakushuu created in his hands.

"Is that?-" Gakushuu says, reaching for it. 

"Oh yeah, sorry man, it was on the floor," the brunet boy says, and passes it back to him. Gakushuu looks it over but it doesn't seem like anything else has been altered, then again he doesn't quite trust his mind now, last he remembered he flicked the switch and…

"What did you call me?" Gakushuu says. "Just now."

"Oh, nah, you reminded us of our friend," the girl says, waving a hand. "He's asian too. And blond. And has violet eyes. You two look really similar - I mean you're different up close - but the resemblance is seriously uncanny. Not saying that all asian people look alike. Do you know him?" 

The cogs in Gakushuu's brain turn, smoke, and stall. They were calling him by his father's name. Gakuhou, if all was right in the world, should be several oceans away in Japan and also in his 50s. There was no way to mix them up. No absolute way because Gakushuu does not look like he's 50, thank you very much. Zero change of confusing them no matter how many people looked at both of them and said they looked alike, no matter how many times his mother pulled out photographs of a younger Gakuhou and put them up to the side of Gakushuu's face.

Gakushuu looks at the device in his hands. No fucking way. The trio's strangeness hits him again. They're in fashion decades old and one of them has a pedometer clipped to their belt. Who uses a whole ass analog clip-on pedometer? Who wears tassels unironically?

"I can't say I've met anyone that looks like me," Gakushuu says slowly. "Just to check, what year is it?"

The redhead boy gives him an odd look. "1995. You okay, man?" 

  1. That was… 



27 years ago. Gakushuu is 27 years in the past. He laughs a little hysterically. "Yeah, I just have the worst hangover right now, I feel like I transcended space and time," Gakushuu says nervously, but it earns a chuckle from the trio. 

"You sure looked like you had a night," The girl says. 

"I don't remember a thing," Gakushuu says, waving a hand around, "where is this again? I think I failed in my attempts to get home, I live so far off campus it's insane."

"You're in the social sciences college," the brunet boy says. "Where’d you come from?”

“Electrical engineering,” Gakushuu says. “My doppelganger in social sciences?”

“Yep,” the redhead says. “Explains why you never ran into each other.” He gestures to the mess of parts in Gakushuu’s hands. “That yours? What’dya make?”

“I honestly have no fucking clue,” Gakushuu admits, earning another round of laughter. “I was drunk out of my mind. This looks like I just soldered random parts together.”

“Hey, you mentioned that you live off campus, right?” Brunet says. “Want to live closer? Our friend’s looking for a roommate.”

“Gakuhou?” The girl says, in what is frankly a horrible anglicized pronunciation of his name.

“Yeah, he’s looking for someone to split rent with. He lives close by,” Brunet says. “Wager you’d be interested?”

“You’re offering someone you just met a room with your friend,” Gakushuu says. “What if I was a serial killer?”

“You haven’t met Gakuhou then,” Redhead snorts. “If anyone was a serial killer, it’d be him,” he pauses, “well not that he’s scary or anything, he’s a super nice guy. Just crazy good at a lot of things.”

“Huh,” Gakushuu says. “Cool. Give me a moment.” He looks at the device in his hands, takes a deep breath, and flicks the switch. Waits half a minute as nothing happens, and when the looks he’s getting turns weirder, Gakushuu decides to cut his losses. Maybe if he's lucky and he plays along well enough, the drugs he's undoubtedly possibly still on would wear off and he would find himself back again in his dorm room in 2022, not 1995 or whatever year these people think they're in. If he really is in 1995, well, he's going to have a hell of a final project when he makes it back to his time.

Sometimes, Gakushuu thinks, you just had to go with it. Say "let's play this game" and play it, because the universe's laws never made much sense anyways. He rolls his shoulders and stands up, says to himself "what else could possibly go fucking wrong?" and turns to them again. “Sure, yeah, I’d like to live closer.”

“Cool, you can give us your number and we’ll get Gakuhou to give you a call,” the girl says. She pulls out a phone and Gakushuu reaches for his, but as she fishes out one of those old 90s cellular phones out of her purse, Gakushuu’s hands curl around the iPhone in his pocket and realises that it’s probably a really bad idea.

“Fuck,” he says. “I think I dropped it in a ditch somewhere.” Along with the rest of his sanity.

She looks at him in amusement. “Do you just want to come along with us? We’re meeting him for breakfast at the cafeteria.”

“Yeah, look like you could use a pick-me-up,” Redhead says. He looks over Gakushuu's shoulder. "That yours?"

Gakushuu's bag! "Shit yeah!" It's lying behind the bench and a quick check reveals that it has his wallet, a pen and thank the gods, his fucking thesis, which means he has a shot of figuring out whatever fuck high-Gakushuu managed to do. There’s also a granola bar in a brand Gakushuu’s not sure existed in the 90s, so he shan’t risk it right now. The bright green word “Vegan!” on the packaging is probably a late 2010s fad, if he remembers right. He smooths down as much shirt he can with his hands and flashes his three new companions his best smile smile. The girl looks a little giddy around the edges, Gakushuu's reassured that at least one thing stays constant through the times, at the very least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody:  
> Gakushuu: glad I'm still hot
> 
> If you've been following the tags like I have you'd notice some great news. We have so many awesome new fics! Let's see some.  
> [Trust me, this was a great idea by WhatTheFridgeDude](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22150852) is an awesome new Karushuu fic that I'm just screaming over. Features the boys in high school, most of the populace shipping them, chaotic energies, all fun stuff.  
> [The Hidden Assassin by Purpleiny](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842065) is a cool Gakushuu-joins-3E fic... with a twist. If you couldn't guess by the title, that's right, he's also an assassin!  
> [the opposite of serene (but it's nice)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192717) and [sparks fly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22065334), two awesome Karushuu works by the brilliant LucariosFish  
> [Relationship Status: Single, Last I Checked by SilentWaves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22126318) that's also another really amazing Karushuu fic where everyone knows but them.
> 
> There are so many great fics and awesome writers out there I'm crying I love you all. Show them some support!!! Honestly I don't think I would be able to keep up with writing so much without all of you reacting and reading my fics with me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the happenings, the things, the stuff.

Meeting a young, scrappy version of Gakuhou is weird, is all Gakushuu can say. He would loved having a bit more time to prepare and up his disguise - dye his hair or get contacts - but standing across a younger version of his father, they look eerily similar. Gakushuu knows he's giving off very strange vibes. Luckily he hopes "time travel" is not a conclusion anyone would ever come to even with multiple leaps of logic. He's hoping the all-asians-look-alike stereotype carries him through mortifying experience, honestly. 

"Hi," Gakuhou says, all young charm and easy boyish grin that his bitter older counterpart lacked, (replaced with a mature sophistication and some cool suave.) Gakushuu sees where he gets his smile from, then. It's a disconcerting thought. He should smile less often.

"Shuu," Gakushuu introduces himself, cringing at the completely unoriginal not even fake name he panicked and gave up when cornered. In fairness, he thinks, his mind was still the equivalent of one of Ren's weird workout smoothies. Calorie counting and protein powder never really rubbed off on Gakushuu, he still kept up with his fitness but years of being force-fed bits of Karma's snacks (whom he still wholeheartedly blames for his change in taste) has left him with an odd sweet tooth and a penchant for strawberry. 

Shuu wasn't the worst fake name, Gakushuu decides. He could easily respond to it on instinct and he didn't start off with "Gaku" which would have definitely raised so many red flags. The girl, who Gakushuu learns is named Aubrey, is very ecstatic and says that Asian names were "so cute". 

"Are you mixed?" The redhead - Mark - says. "I mean, you kinda look," he makes an aborted motion gesturing to most of Gakushuu's face, "no offence, but-"

"Yeah," Gakushuu says, inwardly relaxing. Thank you, mama. This would put another level distinction between him and his father. "I'm American on my mother's side and Japanese on my father's."

"Oh?" Gakuhou leans forward, eyes sparkling with a child-like excitement that Karma claims he sees on Gakushuu's face but Gakushuu doesn't sparkle, for god's sake. "Can you speak the language of our people?" He says with a sing-song lilt in Japanese, sounding rather mischievous.

Gakushuu's taken aback. What the fuck happened to his dad? Okay, yeah, he's aware of the whole Ikeda fiasco that occurred when he was circa 4 years old. His father's favourite student killed himself, he went through a depressive episode and vowed to never let it happen to anyone again, went psycho with his teaching ideologies for a few years and then had another change of heart when some octopus creature exploded into fairy dust. But this person in front of him? Complete stranger. 

Gakuhou looks disappointed at his lack of response and visibly sags. "I asked if you were able to speak Japanese," he says in English, "it's-"

"I know," Gakushuu says quickly in Japanese, and watches his father's face light up again. Gakushuu knew he looked young for his age - back when, or forward then rather, he was a teenager, of course - and his mother had commented his father kept his complexion into his early 40s, while she lamented she was already growing grey at the edges. Gakushuu sees it now but Gakuhou smiling made him look impossibly more youthful. Gakushuu had a flawed basis for comparison, given that his freshest memory was this man bitching about the number of candles on his birthday cake.

"It's just jarring hearing someone speak 'the language of my people' after so long," Gakushuu throws back. "You got me by surprise."

Gakuhou laughs. "I know what you mean. I've gotten rusty," he admits. Gakushuu's kept fluent through regular conversations with his friends back in Japan but it's not like he can say that. He doubts convenient international calls existed yet, so he just shrugs.

"I want you," Gakuhou nods. "Come live with me." He turns to his friends who are watching with poorly concealed amusement. "Where did you find him? I don't believe you picked him off the street."

"We thought he was dead," the brunet - John - says. "I mean, first we thought it was you, then we thought he was dead."

"I thought he was a homeless person," Audrey says. 

"Homeless for no longer," Gakushuu sighs. "I don't think I could get out of this living arrangement if I tried." In about 5 years he will be born into it, after all. By then he would have figured out whatever the fuck high-Gakushuu did and be back home. His home, 25 years in the future. 

“Oh,” Gakuhou says in a funny tone, an eyebrow quirked like Gakushuu’s a riddle he’s trying to figure out. Whatever conclusion he arrives at must be satisfactory because he then gives Gakushuu a quick smile and hands him the menu. “After breakfast you can stop by mine and check out the place, what do you say?”

“Sure,” Gakushuu agrees, opening the menu, and then pausing. It’s all classic american food - it seems that the diet of the westerners have not changed much in two decades - but what surprises Gakushuu at first is the price of everything, or rather the lack of price of anything, in that pretty much all the menu items are dirt cheap. The second thing Gakushuu realizes is that he has no fucking money that he can spend without being accused of having really bad counterfeit cash or being a time traveler. 

“God dammit,” Gakushuu curses. “I need the washroom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gakuhou: :D  
> Gakushuu: >:O ???


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sdfghjgfd what's going on

**1995**

Gakushuu thinks he’s reached a new low in his life, squeezed into a dingy bathroom stall with flipping through his wallet and squinting at the serial number of the american money he does have, trying to discern under the shitty bathroom lighting whether the bills could be used in this day and age or if their to-be-minted date had yet to arrive.  He feels like a drug dealer and determines that all his money is now, in fact, worthless, or in other words worth something in only 20 years and could get him arrested for bad counterfeiting now. His cards are for accounts that have yet to exist, which means he is essentially bankrupt.

Gakushuu sighs. He’s not proud of what he’s about to do, but he picks three pockets on the way back to their table and replaces the wallets on the ground “hey, I think you dropped that”, “is that yours?” He nicked only a couple of dollars from each one, but he has a dire need, okay? He pays for his own meal like a normal person instead of admitting he’s a time traveler and thus has no money that’s currently legal tender. 

The trio beg off for their own appointments after the meal which leaves Gakushuu to follow his father like a lost puppy - hey, what’s new? - to his near-campus apartment a short walk away.

“This is me,” Gakuhou says.

Gakushuu feels a pang of… something, stepping into the apartment, he immediately knows what it is. Four years in America with only short trips during the school breaks home, flitting in and out of not only his father’s house but Karma’s and Ren’s, suddenly being so far from home…

...and stepping into exactly what he’s been missing for a while now, something warm and cozy and the strange American-Japanese style of decoration his parents have always adopted with a quirky flair, already oddly modern minimalist for 90s America, the couch with a blazer draped over it’s arm like how his father always laid his after work, and even the smell of the place. It’s missing his mother, but…

Gakushuu feels abruptly homesick. 

“Everything okay?” Gakuhou says, a hand light on his shoulder. 

“I,” Gakushuu starts, but it comes out more choked up than he intends it to be. He clears his throat. “Nothing. Your place is nice.”

“Thank you,” Gakuhou says with a tone of voice that tells Gakushuu he doesn’t quite believe him. “Let me give you a quick tour.”

There are three rooms, two bedrooms and a living area with a closed kitchen - Gakushuu misses his open concept floor plan. There’s only a single bathroom, but Gakushuu sees the brand of shampoo that his father has apparently been using for 25 fucking years and tries his best to stifle his laughter, but privately thinks he’s grateful for it. Says “I would love to move in,” and immediately thinks it sounds extremely fishy. He's aware he's shooting himself in the foot but he really needs to know - is his father a reckless idiot? "You're not going to ask anything from me? No character references, proof of my previous leases, any background information, nothing? An upfront deposit? What if I'm a serial killer?"

"I like to think I'm a good judge of character," Gakuhou says smiling, leaning against the doorway. "The fact that you offered means you have nothing to hide-" Gakushuu snorts derisively "-and it's nice you are concerned, but this isn't a job interview. If you want to give me your resume, go for it," he says.

Gakushuu rolls his eyes. "Yeah, my character reference is this guy I met an hour ago who thinks I'm such a good guy he's ready to rent me a room in close proximity to where he sleeps at night."

"Reference checks out," Gakuhou beams. "When will you be moving in, do you need help?"

Gakushuu opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. "Today, if possible? Get it over and done with? I don't own a lot, it's no trouble," he gives Gakuhou his most convincing smile. It must work - of course it works, Gakushuu knows this man and all his devious mind tricks before he even knows them himself - because Gakuhou hands him a spare key.

Gakushuu looks at it incredulously. Who was this man?

His next order of business - creating a fake life from scratch is hard - is, well, pretending he used to live somewhere. He steals more money in much bigger increments this time, so much money that he wonders why there's no outrage of a whole street of people complaining about losing their wallets, although he does wince in sympathy from across the street when he spies three people simultaneously patting their pockets on shock and exchanging horrified glances at each other.

His sixteenth victim must be a very foolish or very rich man because he ends up with a good stack of hundred dollar bills. He hits multiple thrift stores to pick up clothes, cringing at the selection the whole time and deciding that he shall dress in nothing but smart formal because there's no way he's going to be seen in public with the world's baggiest jeans, no matter how many people are wearing them or how vintage he tries to convince himself they are. He's getting looks for his skinny jeans but they make his ass look fantastic, thank you very much, he should start a fashion revolution and single-handedly show the world the merits of fitted clothing. 

Well, he doesn't only get thrift store coats and button downs. There are some vintage band shirts - well, not vintage yet - that he thinks he can pull off, and maybe pass them onto Karma if he manages to bring his luggage across space and time. Given that his messenger bag traveled with him, it shouldn't be any issue as long as he's in contact with the object.

He buys toiletries and small knick knacks that a normal person moving would possess and, given that he's supposed to be a fellow college student, throws in stationery and textbooks into his cart. He racks up a surprisingly cheap bill.

"My current roommates are glad to be rid of me," Gakushuu says, hefting his thrift-store luggage full of dollar-store personal artifacts over the threshold. "One of them has a girlfriend that wants to move in, the other thinks I pull too many all nighters and can't sleep when the living room light is on."

"Luckily for both of us, I pull plenty of all nighters as well," Gakuhou says. "We can study together." 

"Great," Gakushuu says, throwing a dorky thumbs up that makes his father start laughing again. Gakushuu doesn't know how he's going to handle life with a young, completely different version of Gakuhou until he figures out what's happening with the time device, but it's sure going to be completely out of his depth, that's for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor, poor Gakushuu


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Asano Family shenanigans (and Gakushuu gloating)

**1995**

What follows is a montage of what could be possibly the best and worst moments of Gakushuu’s life. He’s drunk on power, he thinks, sipping shitty Whole Foods eight dollar champagne and fixing together the world’s shittest computer of his time and the world’s best of this, a screwdriver in one hand and the next two decades worth of electrical engineering knowledge in another. 

He ends up with a horrifyingly slow desktop computer that assists in his task to hack into Harvard’s database - state of the art, for now - to add his name and fake credentials into their records. Then he calls up the student office and tells them he’s lost his student identification card, could he get another? Pays an exorbitant twenty five bucks and has a shiny piece of plastic reaffirming his very real name and his very real identity. Shuu Tanaka, electrical engineering, 22, Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. 

He leaves a sticky note on the stupid computer screen reminding him to delete all trace of his existence before he leaves. 

Then begins the task of trying to decipher high-Gakushuu’s ramblings in the thesis, which is going as well as Gakushuu thought it would, which means it’s not. Around page 29 do weird symbols start popping out everywhere with no legend to describe any of them, and the writing starts going off in tangents dictating concepts that Gakushuu definitely knows he’s unaware of. It’s still his handwriting but he wonders if he’d been briefly possessed by someone who knew the apparent secrets of time travel, but honestly, what the fuck? He searches his room for hidden microphones or cameras and keeps an eye out for anyone who might be tailing him because honestly, finding himself an unwilling participant of a Truman show type situation was more plausible than him accidently inventing time travel while on 5 tabs of LSD.

Gakuhou is happily accommodating through it all. Gakushuu’s pulled a few strings, quickly invested in a few projects he knows turn profitable, maybe illegally acquired a bit more money from equally illegal establishments and handed Gakuhou 3 months worth of rent in cash. He’d taken it with a bemused expression. 

Gakushuu doesn’t believe Gakuhou really needs a roommate, because his father’s been a bit of an entrepreneur and smart investor himself and he’d obviously been doing just fine in his little apartment before Gakushuu came along. Gakushuu points this out over one takeout dinner and Gakuhou has the decency to look a little sheepish. “Maybe I was just bored,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“And you decided to alleviate your boredom by inviting possible axe murderers into your house?” Gakushuu says.

Gakuhou smirks at him them, arrogance shining through his cheerful demeanor and looking much more like the father Gakushuu’s familiar with. “I can handle myself,” Gakuhou says, eyebrow raised, challenge in his gaze.

“Oh?” Gakushuu says. “When I come at you in the middle of the night with an axe, maybe?”

“I can disarm you,” Gakuhou says, a smile quirked on his lips like it’s oh-so-easy. Gakushuu feels his own Asano pride seep through, they’ve always shared a mean competitive streak, and Gakushuu’s filled with the sudden need to kick his young father’s ass. Gakuhou is a very high achiever and he likes to humble-brag about it, and Gakushuu has been waiting for literal decades to one-up him on something. Sure, the rivalry between him and his actual father has mellowed out over the years, but with this opportunity presented to him on a silver platter? Gakuhou, aged 22, looking like he thinks he’s the best in the world and practically baiting Gakushuu to punch him in the face?

He does. Multiple times. In front of a very stunned crowd of several other college kids, who’ve spent years watching “that Asian liberal arts kid” Gakuhou Asano take down even the toughest american fighters, get knocked down in the makeshift ring in the sports hall by “another Asian kid, no, this one is in engineering, holy shit you HAVE to come watch this it’s insane.”

To be fair, Gakushuu’s known for years all his father’s fighting techniques and the best ways to counter them. As good as he is, this Gakuhou isn’t quite as seasoned a fighter as he should be in a couple of years, and the fifth time in a row he lands on his back and Gakushuu pulls him up, he says, “what the fuck, man.” Just to prove it’s not a fluke he lets any opponent fight him and the people who’d came to redeem their honor after losing to Gakuhou simply lose to his son. Not that they know it but Gakushuu does, and he lords it over their heads with a private parade. Never challenge an Asano, losers. 

“You should be glad I’m not an axe murderer,” Gakushuu sings. Beating Gakuhou’s ass at something always made him giddy with elation. The first time he’d won at chess, Gakushuu had such an adrenaline high he ran three laps around the neighborhood and Gakuhou had gaped wordlessly in anger at their chessboard and joined Gakushuu. It turned into a vicious race which Gakuhou had won, but he had longer legs and also worse strategy at chess, so Gakushuu hadn’t been too bothered.

“Yeah,” Gakuhou says, looking both frustrated and awed at the same time. “Shuu, you have to teach me your moves.”

"Sure," Gakushuu says non-committedly. Gakuhou seems appeased at that and grabs him by the arm, steering him over to where his three friends are waiting in the wings.

"No wonder you didn't seem concerned when I told you Gakuhou might be a serial killer," Mark says.

"What are you- oh, would you stop telling people that?" Gakuhou says, but he sounds the opposite of offended. Flattered, even.

Audrey latches onto his arms, hands curling around his biceps and giving an experimental squeeze. "I can't believe you were hiding this under your long sleeves," she gushes, twirling a lock of her hair. "Are all the hot men hiding in Asia?"

"Maybe," Gakushuu says, giving her a dazzling grin. When he turns back, John is avoiding looking at them, hands buried in his pockets. Gakuhou and Mark are gazing at him with twin stupefied looks in their eyes, although they quickly snap out of it. Gakushuu quickly runs through the happenings of the decade and thinks, ah, yes, the problem of the non-straights and their lack of rights. Don't ask, don't tell, don't be a boy and kiss a boy in public, Gakushuu mentally notes down to never mention or make any allusions to Karma and instead lets Audrey continue hanging off of him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you might already know what is about to happen. Don't worry, you guys, not yet.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (2010 taylor swift starts playing in the background)

**1995**

Gakushuu does end up teaching Gakuhou how to fight. They spar in between Gakuhou’s lessons when they have time to skip out to the gym, and Gakushuu starts crafting his own timetable to keep up appearances and also because if he stares at his shitty crayon drawings for any longer, he thinks he’ll go even more insane than he already has. He sits in some engineering classes for refreshers and takes specialized courses from other majors he didn’t have the time to attend, quietly hums 2010’s Call Me Maybe to himself and then blasts Bon Jovi to get Carly Rae Jepsen out of his head. 

“Why isn’t Lorde born yet?” Gakushuu laments. 

“Who?” Gakuhou looks up in surprise from the coffee table where he has his notes sprawled around. There’s an empty space for Gakushuu, but he’s taken to lying on the couch with a book open to a random page on his stomach.

“Nothing, you wouldn’t know her, she’s not born yet.” Gakushuu sighs. He taps his fingers against his thigh until they fall into a familiar rhythm. “You don’t know, oh-oh, you don’t know you’re beautiful…”

“Huh?”

“You ever get reverse deja vu?” Gakushuu says, waving a hand around. He stares up at the ceiling. “Like you miss something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“Can’t say I have,” Gakuhou says. “What do you miss?”

“Pop music,” Gakushuu says.

“Oh,” Gakuhou says. There’s a pause. “Like what?”

Gakushuu throws both his arms in the air, then points at Gakuhou with an index finger, and starts wagging it to the beat. “You are,” he sings, “my fire, my one, desire.”

“What?” Gakuhou says, an eyebrow raised in amusement. “I never heard that song before.”

“Believe, when I say,” Gakushuu sits up, “I want it that way!” He pauses, “of course you haven’t. It doesn’t exist yet. Humor me.”

“Alright,” Gakuhou says, tapping a pen against the table. “Are you an aspiring songwriter?”

“I am not,” Gakushuu says, and sighs again. “I miss Ariana Grande.”

“Is that your girlfriend?”

“Maybe one day she will be.”

“Oh, I wish you all the best in your relationship,” Gakuhou says, with so much sincerity that Gakushuu can’t help but burst into undignified giggles. 

“I want it, I got it,” Gakushuu sings. “You like my hair?”

“Yes,” Gakuhou says.

“Thank you,” Gakushuu says. In the background, Green Day loops again. He groans and tosses the book aside, then grabs one of the couch cushions and presses it over his head. He has the tune to one of the songs from Wicked in his head that doesn’t quite remember all the lyrics to, but he couldn’t search it up because it didn’t exist yet. This, Gakushuu thinks, is the worst thing about being 25 years in the past. He’s found accommodation and cash fairly easily, the fashion takes a bit of adjustment to get used to but he thinks he’s settled in a style that doesn’t look too out of place nor affect his sensibilities. 

He’s an Icon, Gakushuu thinks stubbornly. There’s no way he’s wearing bell bottoms. He’s glad that Gakuhou has also decided that that particular trend wasn’t for him as well, Gakushuu doesn’t think he’ll ever recover from the sight of seeing his father in tacky 90s fashion. The pants are still getting looks, though, the other day Mark asked him why his pants were so, well, tight. “Is that an asian thing?”

Gakuhou looked appalled at that. “It is not,” he says.

Gakushuu scoffs at both of them. “Do I not look great in these?” He demands, lifting the hem of his shirt and standing up to show off his legs. At the risk of acting too gay or sexually harrassing his own father Gakushuu decides not to show off his ass - even though it is an asset, he must say - and he simply hooks his leg over the back rest of the couch and crosses his arms.

“Well,” John says, looking slightly red around his collar but making no move to shift any further from Gakushuu’s thigh a few inches from his face. “It certainly is… um, fitting.”

“Fitting,” Gakuhou echoes.

“At least I’m not wearing a color-block windbreaker,” Gakushuu says.

Mark crosses his arms over his chest, and said windbreaker. “What’s wrong with this?”

Gakushuu wrinkles his nose at him with the perfect judgmental look, then turns to Gakuhou, who’s dressed decidedly normally. On second thought, Gakushuu really does want to see his father in oversized flannel. “Let’s go shopping,” he says.

“Shopping? Like girls?”

“Guys can do plenty of shopping,” Gakushuu rolls his eyes. “You need something other than Nirvana T-shirts. How many Nirvana shirts do you own? I don’t think I’ve seen you in anything else.”

“Four,” Mark says, but to his credit he sounds sheepish.

“Shopping,” Gakushuu decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fruit is going to murder me


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody:  
> Me: 90s Gakuhou

**1995**

His main agenda is to dress Gakuhou up like a doll, so that’s what he does. It’s very unfortunate that camera phones had yet to exist in 1995, but there is no way Gakushuu is missing out on any of this material, and it’s not like he has a dire need to keep up a particular reputation in this era. The benefits far outweigh the risks of mild embarrassment and judgement he gets for bringing a digital camera into a department store.

“Is this necessary?” Gakuhou asks, a snap-back cap on his head and an awkward peace sign up as Gakushuu takes his seventh picture whilst giggling like a madman. “I don’t particularly like caps.”

“I think you look positively adorable in caps,” Gakushuu coos. “Wear this one, it’s red.” He dumps the cap backwards on Gakuhou’s head, snaps another picture, then bursts into another round of giggles. “Flannel,” he says in between wheezes, and grabs Gakuhou by the arm to drag him to the back end of the store. 

“Where did you even find such tight jeans for yourself?” Gakuhou says as he pulls on an oversized flannel shirt and grimaces at himself in the reflection. “I haven’t seen these sort of, uh, fashion being marketed.”

“I had them altered,” Gakushuu says, waving a hand flippantly. The things he does for his aesthetic. He’s always pulled off an effortlessly chic look even if a lot of his clothes were tailored, but he’d gotten so odd looks from the seamstress when he’d explicitly specified he wanted his jean cuffs to suffocate his ankles for her to finally get the memo that slim fit jeans were slim fit jeans, god dammit! If Ren could see him now, he would have an aneurysm from laughing too hard.

“Oh,” Gakuhou says, just as Mark and John return from their shopping spree from another part of the store with armfuls of clothing. They do a double take at Gakuhou’s unfortunate fate as Gakushuu’s new barbie doll and Gakushuu grins at both of them, stepping forward to ruffle Gakuhou’s hair. “Doesn’t he look adorable!”

Gakuhou was a slim man and he was practically swimming in the sweater. “That does not suit him at all,” John says behind snickers. 

“Well I think it makes him look extra cuddly,” Gakushuu says. Gakuhou’s cheeks burn at that and Gakushuu takes a bit of pity on him - he does have many photographs, enough for today, he thinks. “Fine,” Gakushuu says, “actual dress time.”

He forces Mark to abandon his 2 new band T-shirts and herds the hopeless trio to a higher end clothing store, by which time he’s less leading them and more trying to drag them across the threshold before the nervous sales assistant calls for security.

“You’re insane!” John says, “we are not buying fancy dress shirts for college, we are not going to prom or a business meeting.”

“It’s not about going to prom,” Gakushuu says, exasperated. “It’s about making a statement.”

“One that says, I’m too rich to hang out with you?” Mark says.

Gakushuu rolls his eyes. “Not quite, but yes.”

“We don’t have that much money to throw around,” Gakuhou protests, which is just rich (hah) because Gakushuu knows he’s full of shit and he does have that much money to throw around, despite the broke college student stereotype. How did Gakuhou go from wearing button downs and jeans to three piece suits everywhere? 

“It’s an important investment,” Gakushuu insists. Despite their protests, he knows he’s going to splurge a little for himself anyways, he did purchase an obscene amount of casual T shirts that he normally wouldn’t mind wearing around campus but they didn’t quite fit the… look, he was going for, in this time period. Plain tees worn right used to be - or will be - hot, but now they just looked lazy and there was no way Gakushuu would carry that image. 

“Fine,” Gakushuu says. “I won’t coerce any of you into making a purchase, but watch me.” 

If he really wanted to, he could also pull off flared jeans and tassel crop tops, it was just a personal insult on his name and his tastes and he refused to attempt it. He was way more in his element now, and societal-imposed heterosexuality or not, Gakushuu pops open the top button of his collar, runs his fingers through his hair and steps out of the changing room.

“Well?” He says, arms extended. One of the most expensive items of clothing in the store, looking like he just rolled out of bed and threw these on - well, in a cute, lazy way. It would be funny with a band tee, he thinks, pull off a Tony Stark look. Did the Iron Man movies come out yet? He has to own the outfit before it makes it to the big screen.

“Wow,” John says, a hand over his mouth, “I mean, wow. You cannot meet my girlfriend.”

“You’ve made your point,” Mark begrudgingly admits, looking at Gakushuu with a thinly-veiled envy, over his money or good looks Gakushuu doesn’t quite know, but he doesn’t quite care. 

Gakushuu sighs, his father and his college friends were weird. “No more tacky band shirts,” he tells them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, imagine the sheer hilarity of the Kunugigaoka teachers meeting now. Koro would be some wanted assassin figure with a mini-Reaper 2.0 hanging off his leg, Karasuma would probably be in elementary school and Irina is like... a year old? 
> 
> Side note, the arbitrary timeline I have in this fic (and my others) are definitely not canon, but so far I've been consistent in making the assclass kids 2000 babies so the ages are extrapolated from there.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kjhgh idk why I'm making Gakushuu That Bitch but you know he is  
> and this is also from his POV and you just know he too thinks he's That Bitch

About over two months into his residence with Gakuhou Asano, Gakushuu realizes that this is the most takeout he's eaten consecutively in his entire life. It's healthy takeout, or healthy in the sense that it's not entirely instant ramen or cheap chinese family takeaway brands, but it's still quick food nonetheless. His family has been a stickler for healthy home eating ever since Gakushuu could remember and both his parents were great cooks in their own right. Gakuhou doesn't have a schedule so packed he is unable to cook, and Gakushuu would have taken it up but he has thus far been distracted with other time travel related pressing matters to be concerned with the origins of his dinner. But now he watches Gakuhou eat lukewarm pasta from a place down the street and he says, "do you cook?"

Gakuhou looks up and blinks. "Uh, not really," he says, sounding a little embarrassed. "I can't really cook."

"Oh my god," Gakushuu says. "You're a grown man. This apartment comes with a beautiful kitchen and you're not utilizing it. Have you been eating takeout for the past 4 years?"

"You're not cooking either," Gakuhou says, crossing his arms. 

"Right," Gakushuu says. He gets up.

"Where are you going?" Gakuhou demands.

"Grocery shopping," Gakushuu says. He's been pushing it to the back of his mind but now he sees that the shared fridge is pathetically stocked. There are greens and dried noodles for quick salads or stirs but Gakushuu doesn't think his father's culinary skills go any further which is absolutely unacceptable. He refuses to let this man parent him without any knowledge of how to fry a meat. 

"Actually," Gakushuu says, "you're coming with me."

"I am?" Gakuhou says.

"Yes," Gakushuu says, with no room for debate in his voice. Gakuhou gets up from his seat, defeated. 

They run into one of Gakuhou's other friends, Alex, when Gakushuu's trying to impart knowledge on how to select the best choice cuts of chicken thighs to a baffled Gakuhou. 

"Is this the new roommate?" Alex says. "I didn't catch the fight but I heard you kicked his ass."

"I did," Gakushuu says proudly, as Gakuhou sulked behind them, a head of cabbage in each hand. 

"Gakuhou, I didn't know you could cook," Alex says. He has his own shopping cart in hand but it's filled with what Gakushuu dubs the college student fundamentals, mainly cheap beer, ramen noodles and canned beans.

Gakuhou opens his mouth to reply but Gakushuu snorts and says, "he fucking can't." Gakuhou gives him a betrayed look but the prospect of finally embarrassing his father after years of being said recipient of is too amazing to pass up. "Don't worry, I'll turn him into a Michelin star chef," Gakushuu says, and turns his attention back to the pork loins.

"He really is something huh," he hears Alex say to Gakuhou. "You finally met your match, you crazy superhuman."

"I have not," Gakuhou protests. Gakushuu hides his snicker behind his hand.

He does acknowledge much later that maybe Gakushuu is better than him at yet another thing, as he sourly tries not to eat dinner too quickly to betray his exhilaration at finally eating some real good fucking food. Gakushuu chews the chicken slowly as Gakuhou battles between his strive for self improvement and pride, having an internal debate that hilariously reminds Gakushuu of himself, until he finally throws in the towel and his napkin and says, "teach me how to cook."

"Thought you'd never ask," Gakushuu says, grinning.

Gakushuu begrudgingly admits that as good of a teacher as Gakuhou had been - will be, he's also a wonderful student. He's attentive and observant and picks things up quickly, unconsciously mirroring Gakushuu in even more uncanny ways especially given how similar they are. A week later Gakushuu rolls his eyes and watches Gakuhou gleefully call up all his associates over to witness his culinary prowess. "They've been dying to meet you," Gakuhou tells him, and steps aside to let Gakushuu appraise his preparation. Gakushuu reaches for the knife and starts dicing the garlic even finer, which Gakuhou makes a face at but moves to stir the simmering stock. 

"I don't believe you made this," John announces, peering at the food with wide eyes. "Gakuhou, I've watched you burn pasta."

"What?" Gakushuu says, amused.

"Don't listen to him," Gakuhou elbows him, blushing a little. "That was once when I first moved here and I didn't know how american stoves work."

"No difference from Japanese stoves," Gakushuu teases.

"I made this," Gakuhou says. "Well, me and Shuu."

"Is there something you can't do?" Audrey squeals, practically throwing herself onto Gakushuu's lap. 

"Travel time," Gakushuu says. He's been trying.

"You're the cutest," Audrey says, wriggling in her seat. American girls were so forward. On Gakushuu's other side sits a blonde named Hannah, who is shamelessly running her fingers through Gakushuu's hair. "How do you get it so soft?"

"Love and care," Gakushuu says. The girls giggle.

"You're no longer the favorite cute Asian," Alex tells Gakuhou.

"Bummer," Gakuhou says.

The meal goes wonderfully, in Gakushuu's humble opinion. There's a cute redhead boy by the name Austin who Gakushuu would love to get to know better in other circumstances - he's certainly got a type, doesn't he? - but he sticks with letting the girls flirt with him and politely flirting back. They're strictly off limits though, with some weird version of the bro code. The dad code: don't flirt with your father's friends even if no one else knows it. How real fucking weird. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shuu is Gakuhou's home economics teacher


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHATS UP PEOPLE

**1995**

Gakushuu steps over the threshold of the apartment he shares with a younger version of his father and is once again abruptly reminded that although he is taking residence in said apartment with his father, the man is young and did not spend 18 years of his life with a workaholic clean-freak parent.

Gakuhou distantly wonders how said man became an obsessive cleaner anyways, gingerly picking up a stray article of clothing with his toes - a fucking band shirt again, he's going to have words with Mark - and wading through the miscalleanous items littering the sitting area. Passed out on the couch is John, curled up on the loveseat is Mark, next to him on the floor is Gakuhou, and there are three bottles of brandy between them. 

Gakushuu clears his throat once. Nothing.

Gakushuu clears his throat again. Nothing.

Gakushuu crosses his arms and yells "Get up, idiots!" and John jumps three feet in the air, Mark rolls off the loveseat, and Gakuhou rolls away to avoid being crushed but hits his head on the coffee table.

Gakushuu mercifully waits for them to regain their bearings before he slaps Mark in the face with his shirt - why was he sleeping topless in someone else's living room anyways - and scowls at the three of them, foot tapping impatiently. He's somewhat aware he's sharing an odd resemblance to his parents right about now before his mother yelled at him to clean his room and before his dad told him no self-respecting person lived in such a pig sty when all he had was perhaps a book on the floor and a clothing hanger or two somewhere, well, Gakushuu was going to hold this over his head from now on.

"Papers everywhere!" Gakushuu snaps, watching the three cower appropriately under his sharp gaze, just the way he likes it. "Glass bottles on the floor, what if someone broke or tripped on them?!"

"We were going to clean it up before you came back!" Mark says fruitlessly, pulling his shirt over his head. "Gakuhou told us what a neat-freak you were and-"

"I am not a neat-freak!" Gakushuu says. He had been a bit of a stickler himself as his parents were when he was younger, but years of existing with Karma who couldn't file papers to save his life had made Karma more organized and himself more tolerable. The mess in the living room wasn't too big of one but he had a  _ point  _ to make. "I'm a normal person who doesn't deign to live in a mess."

"We'll get to it," Gakuhou says immediately, hopping to his feet. "Clean the room up and-"

"No," Gakushuu says.

John's already in the middle of gathering papers around him and he pauses rather comically at Gakushuu's interruption. "No?" He repeats, brows furrowing in confusion.

"If we're going to spring clean, we might as well do everything once and right," Gakushuu says. "Don't think the both of you are getting off scot free, you practically live here, you're pitching in."

"It's not my fault that my roommate got a new girlfriend and they're always going at it," Mark complains. "Was I supposed to sit there and listen in?"

"It's your fault for not getting a girlfriend and driving him out first," Gakushuu says good-naturedly. 

"I don't really have an excuse to be here," John shrugs helplessly, a blush painting his cheeks. 

Gakushuu rolls his eyes. "Don't  _ you _ have a girlfriend?"

"Um," John says helplessly.

Oh well. Not Gakushuu's job to help John get over his gay and or bisexual crisis. "Cleaning. I want every part of this house clean and organized, and I'll make dinner for everyone." 

They perk up at that. Animals, all of them. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach or so the saying goes, which Gakushuu can't berate them or he'd be a hypocrite since he's pretty sure he fell in love with Karma the day he first cooked him lunch. Gakushuu lets them know his room is off limits - he doesn't need roving eyes over his confidential stuff and he keeps his living space meticulously organized, anyways - but the rest of the apartment should look like the cover of an interior design magazine by 5. 

"The bookshelf," Gakushuu says, wrinkling his nose at it. "Arrange the books by alphabetical order following the authors' last names and separate them with bookends, but sort the books in each category by arranging them in a color gradient. Line the spines by the front, don't push them to the back."

"Why?" Gakuhou says. "Color coding is not a legitimate book organization system."

"Well you don't have that many books," Gakushuu points out. "And besides, the point of any organizational system is to ensure consistency. An alphabetical arrangement would be helpful but only up to a certain point, by which you would have to skim through the book titles in a section to find the book you require, so there's no real incentive to sort books alphabetical all the way down each letter. Arrangement in a color gradient whilst serving no true organizational value, looks aesthetically pleasing and you're thus more motivated to keep up with the system." 

"Huh," Gakuhou says thoughtfully, "I guess you're right."

"Yeah," Gakushuu shrugs, "It's how my-"  _ -dad always does it _ . Oh, "huh."

"Hm?" Gakuhou says.

"No, I just…" Gakushuu looks at a mini Gakuhou in front of him, then starts grinning and leans over to ruffle his hair. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dont quote me on cleaning tips. I'm the messiest person I know.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I need more Shuu content in my life. Fellow gakushuu lovers where ya at

**1995**

"Isn't it nice to live in a clean house?" Gakushuu says breezily, sweeping past from the bathroom to the kitchen and watching in amusement as Mark is on his knees, scrubbing grout out of their floor tiles.

"What are you making?" Gakuhou says, from where he's trying to pull down the curtains and put them back up again, but right this time. "It smells great."

"Beef stew, you'll love it," Gakushuu says.

"Are you going to be a chef in the future?" John says.

"That's right," Gaksuhuu says, "I came all the way to Harvard to pursue a degree in electrical engineering so I could drop everything and go back to Japan to be a ramen chef."

John snickers. "Nice."

"So you, Adelbury, what are your career prospects?" Gakushuu asks.

"I'm going back to Arkansas and helping out in my dad's furniture store until my brother graduates. Then  _ he _ can help out in Dad's furniture store while I be a fancy business market analyst."

"Cool," Gakushuu nods. "Conover?"

"I don't know, communications or marketing," he shrugs.

"Hm," Gakushuu says. "Asano?" God, calling someone by his own surname was so weird. How did his father consistently keep it up through his school years?

"You're going to think it's kind of lame," Gakuhou says. 

"I already think you're kinda lame," Gakushuu says. "What is it?" 

"Well, I've always kind of wanted to be a teacher," Gakuhou rubs his arms. 

Gakushuu pauses. He looks over at Gakuhou, frowns, then says, "I don't think that's lame at all."

"That I'm wasting my degree in Harvard to teach a couple of middle school kids?" Gakuhou says. 

"Well, yeah, look at me," Gakushuu says. "I'm going to be a chef."

There's a round of laughter as they settle back into their assigned cleaning duties. Gakushuu gets a stock started and watches Gakuhou snap the fixings back in the curtain rod and then move over to help John, who's busying himself with scrubbing down the couch upholstery.

"Gakuhou," Gakushuu calls out, getting the attention of the room. He raises a spatula. "Stir fry the vegetables."

Cooking with his father had never been a past time for Gakushuu, and it had been a bit of an odd adjustment with him in the kitchen. His parents rarely cooked together, or if they did Gakushuu was never there to witness it, and Gakushuu had been a bit of a solitary chef himself until Karma commandeered his kitchen one day and just never left. Working with Gakuhou is nothing like working with Karma and it's not just because of the lack of inappropriate flour hand-prints he acquires on his ass, but because Gakuhou was a far quieter and more independent worker.

Gakushuu would say he's the far better team player between the three of them. Gakuhou was a leader, yes, but he was uncomfortable in situations he did not have a higher level of control over, and Karma was defiant sometimes for the sole purpose of testing the others' boundaries. Gakushuu excelled in situations where he has to be subservient to someone (Gakuhou), equal partners (Karma) or a leader (everyone else). This version of Gakuhou had yet to be the full-bloom arrogant man his older counterpart was and he takes direction albeit a little sourly.

Gakuhou starts the stir fry - "heat's too high," Gakushuu tells him, "the garlic will burn the moment it touches the pan," - and Gakushuu thinks about his father's cooking and how one fine day he'd sat Gakushuu at the kitchen counter and started a lesson which Gakushuu interrupted with "I can already cook."

"Can you," his father had said with one raised eyebrow, rapping the back of Gakushuu's knuckles with a wooden spoon. 

How hilariously ironic, Gakushuu thinks, because his father taught him all these new cooking techniques and recipes only for him to turn back time and around and teach them back to Gakuhou.

That, and the big question of the organizing bookshelves, made Gakushuu think. Was his travel back to this time predestined by a time loop, where he had to be here to ensure the events of the future? Didn't that constitute some sort of paradox, or the unanswerable question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

It does reassure Gakushuu a little, he supposes, because this sort of meant he knew he would be able to make it home. 

Dinner is a brief affair, with the boys famished and exhausted that they quickly appreciate the food, gorge on it, and then go home to pass out on a bed that Gakushuu wouldn't order them to make. Children, the lot of them, although they remind Gakushuu endearingly of the Virtuosos. The reminder of them makes him a little melancholy again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New readers: aww a weird little crack-fluff fic  
> Readers who have stuck with me for a while: where is it, the secret angst, where the fuck is it


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yall have heard of queerbaiting. Is angstbaiting a thing?
> 
> I think you might kill me if I drag said inevitable angst out any longer.

**1995**

"You okay?" Gakuhou says as they're drying dishes together, reminiscent of when his mother would make them do housework together after they pissed her off. Just like Gakuhou to be observant and introspective as ever.

"Just a little homesick," Gakushuu admits. He looks at Gakuhou. "It's your fault."

Gakuhou laughs quietly. "I get what you mean," he says, bumping Gakushuu's shoulder. "Having a fellow countryman here is making me think of Japan more often. A year left before we graduate and go back, huh?"

"Yeah," Gakushuu says. 

"What are your plans after this?" Gakuhou says. 

"Going back to Japan," Gakushuu says immediately, because that's the first thing he plans to do when he's back in 2022 again, never mind the cost of last minute flights or the useless thesis he's definitely going to have to rewrite. "To see my parents and my-" Shit, don't say boyfriend, don't say boyfriend "-friends," Gakushuu finishes.

"That's nice," Gakuhou says. "You have a good relationship with your parents?" 

Gakushuu opens his mouth, closes it. It's complicated, is what it is, with his father's warped worldview and past totalitarian teachings and his mother watching at a distance with disapproval and inaction, it'd put quite the strain between all three of them. Post-Korosensei had seen many uncomfortable and awkward changes in their family dynamic and there may be some things Gakushuu would never get over, but they're trying in their odd dysfunctional way. 

It hadn't really mattered to Gakushuu where he'd went for college as he was sure he'd be successful either way, and the split second decision to go to his parents' Alma Mater was an attempt of reconciliation and made in the dead of the night with Karma talking about him moving halfway across the world. He'd told Gakuhou he'd enjoy crushing his valedictorian record to the ground and Gakuhou viciously challenged him to try, although he hugged Gakushuu a bit longer than he normally did, and told Gakushuu he was proud of him, to stay safe and not get hit by a campus bus. Neither of them cried, because there were no witnesses to prove it.

"They were always there with me," Gakushuu settles on saying.

"That's sweet," Gakuhou says, a bit of a wistful tone in his voice, and Gakushuu thinks of the time he met his paternal grandparents when he was 7 and how they told Gakuhou in front of their faces that he could have done much better. The next time he saw them was at his grandfather's funeral when he was 10, and his grandmother hadn't looked at him the entire time. Gakushuu presses closer to Gakuhou and Gakuhou gives him a wide, misty-eyed look, but then sighs and looks down at his reflection on the ceramic plate in his hands. 

"My parents haven't exactly approved of my decision to come here," Gakuhou shrugs in a faux nonchalant way. Gakushuu knows him too well to know that he's hurt. "They think it's a waste of my potential."

"To come to Harvard," Gakushuu says with a deadpan tone, although he already knows the answer.

"To take liberal arts of all things in Harvard," Gakuhou says wryly. "I mean, I see where they're coming from sometimes, it doesn't exactly have the most lucrative career path as compared to the STEM subjects," Gakuhou trails off, tapping the countertop. "Maybe I'll stay in America-"

"No!" Gakushuu says, and then realizes he's put his foot into his mouth. Gakuhou gives him a quizzical look.

"You have prospects in Japan, you can't not go back," Gakushuu says lamely. He can't exactly tell Gakuhou the real reason he needs him to go back home - to have a baby, of all things. 

"I have prospects here too," Gakuhou says. "My parents are driving me into a corner, at least here I have the freedom to explore my choices." He sags then. "It's not like I don't want to never see them again."

"That's precisely why you have to go back," Gakushuu insists. "You want to be a teacher, right? You have to help reform the Japanese education system and change the rigid mindsets of the people so there are more options and better futures for the children who wish to pursue their own dreams." It's not exactly false, Gakushuu thinks. The education systems are definitely reformed.

Gakuhou lets out a huff of a laugh. "That's a tad ambitious," he says quietly.

"What, and you're not ambitious?" Gakushuu scoffs. "You're Gakuhou Asano. You've made it this far without your parents' support, what's a bit more? Crush the system, make your own rules."

Gakuhou gives him a sad look. "I guess."

"Wha-" Gakushuu gapes. Who was this ridiculous, pathetic, sad sack of a man? Where was the Gakuhou Asano who did things? "You're stupid insecure."

"No I'm not," Gakuhou bristles.

Gakushuu instantly knows what to do. Gakuhou was still a proud man so Gakushuu turns his nose up and stares at him. "Unambitious, afraid of failure. Looks like your bravado is all talk, huh, you're comfortable with the status quo and your current safe bubble that you're too scared to step out of. You want to live in this safe space where everyone praises you for your sordid achievements to make you feel better about yourself and not back in Japan where you're afraid to challenge the system. You're  _ running _ ."

"I'm not running," Gakuhou snarls. "You don't understand. I have worked so hard-"

"And the rest of us didn't? All your friends got into Harvard and are keeping their GPAs because of flukes? You think you're special because Mama and Papa told you no?" Gakushuu's being particularly vicious now, and he's enjoying it. He spins the plate in his hands in a particularly fancy manner and slides it across the counter, then plucks the plate off Gakuhou's hands to save it from the inevitable altercation as he takes a large step forward, and Gakuhou takes one back. He bares his teeth in a shape grin, and Gakuhou visibly flinches.

"Look at yourself," Gakushuu coos mockingly, "You're a coward. Stay in America, then. Prove Mama and Papa right, that you'll never make something of yourself with your choices, that you'll never-"

"Shut up," Gakuhou hisses. 

"Oh? Spent years towering over people like this with your sharp tongue, doesn't feel that good when it's you on the other end, huh?" Gakushuu taunts. He feels every bit of being his father's son at the moment.

Without warning, Gakuhou swings. He catches Gakushuu in the cheek, and Gakushuu retaliates, kicking Gakuhou back and then wrestling him to the ground. Gakuhou rages and thrashes against him, it's a struggle but eventually Gakushuu has him pinned, and he waits Gakuhou's tantrum out.

Eventually Gakuhou ceases fighting and lies on the floor, miserable and pliant. Gakushuu lets him go and lies down next to him. His jaw aches and he feels a bruise forming.

Gakuhou stares at him from where his cheek is pressed against the cool kitchen tiles. "You're an asshole," he mumbles.

"I didn't really mean that, you know" Gakushuu says, because he looks like he needs the affirmation. His father was a lot of things but a quitter and a coward he was not. Gakushuu knows he winds up going back to Japan anyways. Gakushuu has to admit that seeing Gakuhou this vulnerable is a refreshing sight.

"Yeah," Gakuhou sighs. He closes his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy lunar new year (eve) to whoever celebrates it! I'm posting this earlier in the day/night than I normally would because my usual schedule is going to be disrupted. I'm about to meet all my distant relatives and have them critique my life choices thanksgiving-style. 
> 
> Ahh, isn't the onset of angst like letting out a breath you've been holding in anticipation? Well, now it's not going away. Be prepared for a few miserable chapters of Gakushuu and Gakuhou being extremely petty with each other.

**1995**

Something changes between them after that, and Gakushuu feels like he’s being abruptly plunged in freezing water. Gakuhou is downright icy with him and Gakushuu knows that directly insulting Gakuhou’s principles and ideologies never turns out well, despite their supposed bonding moment a few days prior, Gakuhou skirts around him like a ghost living in the same house. It’s a jarring change and even Mark and John pick up on it, shooting Gakushuu apologetic glances when they’re over but indulging their friend in his silent treatment. Gakushuu’s just glad Gakuhou have people at his back, and he gives them a one-shouldered shrug on his way to the lecture halls. He picks one at random, exchanges pleasantries with the professor as he walks in, then settles in a random seat.

His desk neighbor leans over with a frown on her face. “When’s the next quiz?”

Gakushuu shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I have no idea.”

He cracks open his notebook and starts doodling in the margins. A tiny tea cup, a little caricature of Karma, a bridge with someone looking over it. Then a sudden silence befalls the room, the absence of chatter making Gakushuu look up, and he realizes everyone is staring at him. Was he called on?

“Uh,” Gakushuu says. He quickly glances at the screen, a multiple choice question. “B.”

“What?” The professor says.

“The answer to that question on the screen,” Gakushuu says. 

“Oh,” the professor says, turning around quickly to check the question. “Yes, that’s B. The question I actually asked you was who you were because I’ve never seen you in my class before.”

“Um,” Gakushuu says. “What class is this?”

“Graduate computational biology,” his desk neighbor tells him. 

“Cool,” Gakushuu says. “Yeah, I apologize, I’m not officially registered to this class.”

The professor frowns. “Are you considering a transfer?”

“No,” Gakushuu says awkwardly. “I had a free afternoon.”

There’s another pause as everyone continues staring wordlessly at him. He’d never been singled out in a lecture before, but this is a graduate class where everyone had probably already known each other after years, he was unlucky. “I’m sorry for the interruption, Ill just go,” Gakushuu says, picking up his notebook. The professor blinks at him in bewilderment and Gakushuu’s halfway out the door before he stops, pivots, and squints at the professor. “Professor Smith?”

Professor Smith blinks at him. “Yes?”

Gakushuu gapes. Professor Smith was his electrical engineering thesis mentor, and he looks so different! “You teach graduate computational biology?”

Professor Smith squints at him. “Who are you?”

Gakushuu blinks once, twice, and bolts. He’s part way across the campus courtyard when he slows to a walk and stuffs his hands in his pockets, and reevaluates the situation as everyone walks around him to their destinations. Gakuhou was giving him the cold shoulder and he just met his mentor from 27 years in the past, which is somehow the oddest thing in the world because why did Professor Smith request to mentor him if his field had been in the biological sciences? Gakushuu was an engineering student. Not that Gakushuu hadn’t done research into Professor Smith’s background before accepting the mentorship, but at that point he’d been more impressed with his years of tenure and his background in Applied Computation and Mechanical Engineering, but it was a bit of a switch to make from Biostatistics, wasn’t it? 

“Oh my god,” Gakushuu says. Maybe he’s cynical, but he’s thinking of Gakuhou’s cooking and his bookshelf organizational skills and now his dilemma between staying in America and japan, and Gakushuu is thinking how much his presence here actually set in motion and how they were supposed to go.

No, there was no way. 27 years is a long time, right? Professor Smith could have simply decided to further his studies in a completely different field out of his own interest and Gakuhou could have moved to Japan just because, when he got bored of America and needed a challenge. It wasn’t because of Gakushuu.

“You’re a hypocrite,” he tells himself quietly. He thinks he already knows that he’s the cause behind these decisions that Gakuhou or Prof Smith otherwise wouldn’t logically make. Gakushuu just wishes to be in denial because then he wouldn’t have to burden himself in the attempt to make sure everything goes right.

But then again… did Prof Smith know? 

He had requested for Gakushuu personally to undertake a mentorship with him, Gakushuu had thought it was because of his transcript and track record, Prof Smith’s offer wasn’t the only one he’d received. But suddenly he’s putting things into perspective and as much ludicrous the idea was… it could be, couldn’t it?

“Fuck,” Gakushuu says, shaking his head. He needs to clear his thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I have a terrible habit of adding too many Original Characters in my stores. It's odd to me because I used to dislike reading OCs in other fics (not all, of course, there are some really well written OCs I get invested in, but I tend to be put off by fics with many OCs particularly if an OC is the main character). I think as a writer it's far easier to get attached to your own character but harder as a reader, you know? Particularly in fanfic where you come looking for the characters you already know. 
> 
> I feel like I started off writing OCs that follow the story (as opposed to a random name being mentioned here and there so the world doesn't seem empty) to not isolate people because of the lack of canon characters? Like my original 2 were just Karma's friends in high school so Karma didn't only talk to, say, Nagisa or Gakushuu or a Kunugigaoka brick wall. But as expected I got attached to them and they followed me to a bunch of other fics. Then the next few I created for the same reason and got overly invested with were the Asanos' housekeepers. 
> 
> I don't know, what do you guys think of OCs? I was thinking about them recently, if you read one of my fics featuring say Rukiyo (one of Karma's highschool friends) without following her "origin story" in a sense in her debut appearance, is it weird? Do you feel like there's something lacking in the worldbuilding? I think I tend to write characters more familiar (?) and if you read say Twice before Reason (both of whom feature Rukiyo but Reason came first) is it weird when you read this character I wrote in with the expectation that you might recognize them? I'm not sure, I'm rambling.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh well, same thing. Out of schedule posting, have fun.

**1995**

Gakushuu makes it back to the apartment at 3am that night, and all he wishes to do is to drink some water and go to sleep. Very faintly he remembers an echo of his father telling him not to get hit by a bus while in Harvard, and Gakushuu’s mind had drifted to the autonomous driverless vehicles that have pretty much monopolized the campus roads and his father’s frequent expression about his skepticism of said vehicles. He didn’t think that his father - and if anything confirmed that somewhere down the line, Gakuhou would figure out that his college roommate is, indeed, his son from the future, it was this - had meant an actual campus bus.

Gakushuu feels high as fuck. Was there something in 90s painkillers? He stumbles to the kitchen, hissing as he puts a bit too much strain on his broken leg, and braces himself against the countertop. He’d lost his crutches by the doorway where he’d put them to the side to get his keys and they’d slid down the wall. It was far too painful to attempt retrieving them.

Gakushuu fumbles with and drops the cup. His fingers were bandaged together, why did he even try? It doesn’t shatter, but it does make an annoying crashing sound, and Gakushuu cringes. Everything sounded louder at night, he thinks, and his father was not a heavy sleeper, but he must be still in the doghouse or Gakuhou is very confident about the lack of robbers because nobody comes to check on the racket.

He can’t pick up the goddamn cup.

“Fuck,” Gakushuu curses, louder than he intended to. He tries for another glass of water, succeeds in filling it up, and spills half of it down the floor anyways. 

It takes three more tries to be sufficiently hydrated, by which time a plate joins the first cup on the floor and Gakushuu in all his intoxicated wisdom throws down a cleaning cloth but possesses no real methodology to mop up the spill, so leaves it there as well. Drags himself to his room, eases himself onto his bed, and then pretty much passes out. 

When Gakushuu wakes up, there’s light streaming into the windows and his head is pounding. Last night’s painkillers have worn off and so Gakushuu’s now feeling the full front of aches from his broken leg, as well as the bruises he’d sustained from the side of the bus and the asphalt. The bus had run up the curb and halted in its non-sanctioned tracks by a fire hydrant on the piece of the sidewalk that just so happened to be the same few squares that Gakushuu had currently been walking across. He’d been hit by the front bumper of the bus, impact breaking his left leg, and fractured his left wrist trying to brace his fall wrong, which meant he was all right now! Ha ha ha. He should stop speaking.

He’d been ferried to the university hospital by the same bus that broke his leg, which was nice because he didn’t have to walk the whole distance. It was less nice that it was 11 at night - Gakushuu curses his woes and penchant for late-night walks - and that half a fraternity deemed it the appropriate day to be down with bad cases of food poisoning, so Gakushuu stood awkwardly on one leg until a nurse asked if he was with the frat.

“Uh, no,” Gakushuu had told her, “I got hit by a bus.”

“You got what?!” She’d shrieked. In all fairness, Gakushuu’s self-preservation skills are, as he’s been told by his wonderful friends, not great, especially not so on sleep deprivation and his existential crises.

He’s not having an existential crisis, he tells the nurse who’s injecting him with a topical anesthetic. He’s made his roommate mad and now he can’t stay in the same apartment because being ignored by Gakuhou reminded him of the impassion and neglect that his father had shown him throughout a large part of his childhood. He had such a loose tongue when he was out of it. The nurse had patted his head..

Gakushuu’s hungry. He’s hungry. “Nuh uh,” he says, because his hunger is dulled by the pain he feels and the throbbing in his head that demands more fervent attention. He grabs a water bottle within reach - eugh, stale water - and pops some of yesterday’s painkillers, and then deliberates venturing outside his room for food. His stomach argues again, wins out, and Gakushuu braces against the furniture and guides himself out of the room.

Gakushuu doesn’t know why he didn’t expect to see Gakuhou, they’re roommates after all, perhaps it was because of the recent bout of mutual ignorance they had going on. Very faintly Gakushuu is reminded of his father’s treatment towards him when he’s sick - namely pretending that Gakushuu is the world’s biggest nuisance whilst making sure a cup of water and his medicine are conveniently ready by his bedside whenever Gakushuu woke up. 

This time, Gakuhou quickly gets over his initial shock and vaults over the couch from where he had been going through a book, and helps Gakushuu to the loveseat. “What happened to you?” He says, voice soft. 

“Got into an accident,” Gakushuu says. He winces as he settles into his seat and Gakuhou hovers around him, brows furrowed. “Fractured my wrist and broke a leg. 

“There were crutches by the door this morning,” Gakuhou says. “Were they yours?”

“I couldn’t retrieve them when they fell,” Gakushuu says, feeling slightly shamed about his inability to help himself. “The kitchen, too.”

Gakuhou frowns at him and bustles around the house. When he gets back to the room he has a glass of water with him, and the pair of crutches he leans by the couch. “You okay?”

Gakushuu looks up at him. His head his muddled, there’s a glass of water in Gakuhou’s hands, and when Gakushuu takes it he feels warmth from Gakuhou’s fingers and he pictures himself, a very long time ago, tightly grasping onto them. 

Gakushuu misses his dad.

“Oh!” Gakuhou says, as Gakushuu topples forward and hugs him. He wraps his arms around Gakuhou’s waist and rests his cheek against the flat of his stomach, smells the three decade old brand of body wash that reminds him of crawling into his parents’ bed when he’s 4 and falling asleep in the back seat of the car when he’s 14, hugging his father at the airport for a suspiciously long time while Karma and his mother politely don’t mention it.

He’d never been particularly close to either of his parents, not when he was a teenager. For every time his father reprimands him about his grades, he matches their schedule on rainy days and pulls the car around the porch to “coincidentally” catch Gakushuu on his way home. His mother used to kiss him on the forehead until he claimed he was too old for it, and then she only did it on some days when he didn’t know how to tell her he needed her, at night in his room when he was too old to be tucked in. They were shit at outright communication and Gakushuu doesn’t know say he missed his dad.

Very slowly, a hand is pushed into the soft of his hair and fingers start stroking it. It’s the same way his father had always pet his hair and Gakushuu lets himself stay there longer, before he reminds himself that he’s 27 years in the past and things were getting probably a bit too weird.

“Sorry,” he says, detaching himself from Gakuhou, the younger version of his father who now had an embarrassed expression on his face. 

"It's fine," Gakuhou mumbles. "You okay?" 

"Thanks," Gakushuu says. He smiles up at Gakuhou and Gakuhou smiles back shakily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask me why my first idea for conflict resolution was to hit Gakushuu with a bus because I can't answer you either


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: offers one chapter of fluff and comfort  
> You guys, paranoid: she's going to add more angst again I know it
> 
> I mean yeah but did you have to call me out on it and spoil it for yourselves

Gakuhou has his hands wringing in front of his lap, and he sighs. “I was… conflicted. You said things to me I’m still hurt and hung up over so I needed some distance to sort my thoughts out.”

“I didn’t mean it,” Gakushuu says, hesitates, “well, not really.”  _ Not yet.  _ “It’s…” He averts Gakuhou’s eyes, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks. Speaking about emotions was never his forte. 

“You just wanted to motivate me to work towards my initial dream despite the difficulties,” Gakuhou says.

“Well, yeah,” Gakushuu says awkwardly.

Gakuhou sighs. “It was still very hurtful.”

Like you always were to me? “Sorry,” Gakushuu offers, but it comes out hollower than he probably meant it to be. Gakuhou senses the insincerity and frowns. 

“Your grades and achievements aren’t everything,” Gakuhou says sharply, “if you don’t have a good character.” He pauses, grimacing, “not that I’m saying you have a bad character-”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Gakushuu spits out, before he stops himself. They stare at each other for a heated moment before Gakuhou’s face darkens, and he turns away abruptly to leave. Gakushuu remembers that this younger version of his father was not - or has yet to be - his own father with flawed morals and was, at present, trying his best to be a good person. Gakushuu grasps his wrist quickly. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and this time he means it. Gakuhou doesn’t pull away, but he glares at Gakushuu.

“You’re so… infuriating,” Gakuhou says hotly, “whether I go back to Japan is none of your business anyways! I’m not a coward and I’m not running away!”

Gakushuu gapes at him. He’s not really sure where this conversation went but at the present moment all he’s sure that their fight has solidified Gakuhou’s will to stay in America. He’s pissed at his grandparents, he’s pissed at his father, but most importantly he’s pissed at himself.

“Don’t make your decisions just to spite me,” Gakushuu hisses, “staying in America will just prove your parents right!”

“I don’t decide my future and my career to spite  _ you _ !” Gakuhou snaps. “Who do you think you are to me? Huh!? You’re nobody!”

Gakushuu rears back. He knows, he knows, that he’s technically nothing more than Gakuhou’s roommate now, but years and years of being belittled by his parents, they were getting better, but suddenly the doors are being slammed right back in his face and Gakushuu is blinking back tears.

This isn’t your father, Gakushuu reminds himself, this is your roommate, but his father’s voice and his father’s face telling him (again) that he meant nothing to him and Gakushuu-

-Gakushuu doesn’t cry. He’s not a crier, he’s never cried. “You’re scared of me because I’m better than you.”

Gakuhou bristles, “you are not-!”

“One day I came into your life and swept the world from right under your feet (the gym mat),” Gakushuu says, “I am everything you could see yourself being (your flesh and blood, your image, your potential) and despite all that you say about having a good character (wanting me to be strong), your pride isn’t sure that you can see anyone (even your own child) do better than you.”

“That’s not true,” Gakuhou snaps, but his voice wavers.

“You stand only on ground you’re sure won’t shake,” Gakushuu says. “You build your arsenal of skills as your security blanket but you'll never let anyone see how to acquire them. A teacher's greatest wish is for their students to surpass them but that will  _ never  _ happen to you because you will never watch them grow and think of them as anything other than a threat to yourself and you help others only when you know that they won't be better than you! You hate it when you're wrong and this entire experience knowing me has been nothing but a huge inconvenience to you, hasn't it?!"

"That's not true!" Gakuhou yells. "You don't know a thing about me!"

"On the fucking contrary!" Gakushuu yells back. "I know more about you than you'll ever fucking know!"

"Who the fuck do you think you are?! Don't reflect  _ your _ own insecurities onto me! I see you're in a bad spot and let you stay without any trouble and you-!"

"-I didn't ask for your oh-so-generous hospitality! Kick me out and put me down like you always fucking do when I so much as do something good-!"

"-I have never once done that! I have been nothing but a brilliant-!"

"-my fucking ass-!"

"-arrogant fucker-!"

"-hypocritical little-!"

"-spoilt brat-!"

"-infuriating, this is all your fault-!"

"-bitch! You," Gakuhou advances, lips curling to bare his teeth, and Gakushuu has nowhere to back up towards with the back of his knees hitting the couch. "Think you know so much about my inner psyche, huh, you psychoanalyze people for a living? Let me tell you that you don't know a single thing about what I deal with, and that includes a mouthy little tenant living under my roof. I have the skills to back up my confidence and I know that I will be the best."

"Oh, you will," Gakushuu says, and it seems to throw Gakuhou off with his sudden agreement, but Gakushuu already knows that his father is the best. Call it a son idolizing his father, call it blind admiration, all Gakushuu ever wanted - coming to Harvard, even - is to live up to Gakuhou. 

What was it they always said? Never meet your heroes? Gakuhou at age 22 is not a hero, he is a mess of a person that can't cook to save his life, dresses like a middle-class person and has subpar organizational skills. 

"But that's the problem, isn't it?" Gakushuu says, because he knows that Gakuhou does become best, that he does fulfill his dream, and that he does - for elements beyond his control - have it come crashing down, and all the insecurities hiding behind the mask of "best" rush forth and twist Gakuhou up. Gakushuu knows he's so angry because he wishes it didn't, he wishes his father had a bit more faith in his own teaching methods and that he never ran away from his single failure and the ghost of his dead student and just went on like the fucking coward he is, but he knows that no matter what he says, it happens in the future anyways. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada~


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is way longer than I anticipated it to be.
> 
> For the record, the previous chapter when Gakushuu's yelling at Gakuhou, he doesn't say the words referencing the future and their relationship that are between the (parentheses). Those were more of his thoughts, i wanted to put them in but didn't know how to make them seamless and on hindsight the parentheses might not have been the most obvious.

1995

Gakushuu doesn't cry, because there's no one around to say if he did. He curls up on the couch - Gakuhou'd done him the courtesy of storming out on account of Gakushuu being unable to do so, but after the adrenaline from the fight wears off Gakushuu is left with the aching from his leg and a bit of a headache setting in. The couch is not big enough for him to stretch comfortably to rest his leg on so with great difficulty and the crutches Gakuhou politely left for him he trudges back to the kitchen - yelling is a thirsty job - and then back to his bedroom. 

Gakushuu needs to leave. He can't stay here, in 1995, this isn't a vacation. He's driving himself insane.

He emails Professor Smith before he can talk himself out of it, requesting a private consultation regarding a delicate matter that does not bode well to be discussed over email. He tacks on that he's the same person who disrupted class last week, almost deletes the line, then decides that Prof's curiosity would win over his skepticism and sends it out. Then he looks over his thesis again.

On page 44 there's a doodle of the three of them - Gakushuu, his dad and his mom. They're rather childishly standing in a line, reminiscent of how a child would draw their family portrait. Written over their heads in block letters with bright orange crayon is "BEEN TO HARVARD AND SURVIVED". Gakushuu grabs a pen and adds the word 1995 before HARVARD.

"What am I going to do?" He says. He's mostly deciphered the weird symbols and scribbling high-Gakushuu had penned down but some of them were just plain made up, meant to represent something arbitrary. Gakushuu, contrary to popular belief, does not have all the world's equations memorized in his head and a stunning 27 years in the past meant that a lot of research that led to the derivation of the equations - in particular the antimatter experiments of the 2010s - have yet to be carried out. 

He almost sees where things go, looking at the device, which is mainly an antimatter time warper, in a sense. Regular matter obeys the laws of unidirectional space-time flow and antimatter, true to its name, does the exact opposite. Harnessing enough of its power would allow one to bend the linear flow of time, which explains Koro-sensei's speed and ability to seemingly be in many places at once, as described by Karma. He wasn't just moving quickly, he was twisting the universe around him.

Now the biggest question was: how did high-Gakushuu figure this out and how does sober-Gakushuu replicate that?

Gakushuu's not-a-smartphone (he gutted a regular nokia phone and outfitted it with the ability to use the internet and check his email, although it has thus far been useless as the current internet interface gave him a headache and nobody emailed him.) pings and Gakushuu jumps in alarm. His first ever notification. Who the fuck-

Prof! Gakushuu quickly taps out a reply, confirming a meetup - two days, he could do two days, he doesn't have any classes to go to anyways - and cheers quietly. Then blanches, because he has 2 days to come up with a convincing argument that won't result him in being dragged out of the office by security. 

Things  _ should _ work out all right, is the thing, because this was the past and the future turns out the way it is, but Gakushuu wasn't going to take chances. What if it didn't? What if Gakushuu didn't put in the effort enough to convince his father to go home and ended up poofing out of existence? Gakushuu didn't know how time paradoxes work but he wasn't about to play with them and risk breaking the loop, so he had to put his upmost effort in everything. It was not like him to slack off in his work, anyways. 

But before that, he had to fix his relationship with Gakuhou. His father had a sweet tooth despite looking like he sleeps in crypts - well it fit young-Gakuhou's persona more to like sweets, in all honesty - which means Gakushuu was going to bake apology cookies, as one does. His broken leg was going to be a problem as with his wrist… He dials a number.

"Hey, it's me, Shuu. I know I'm technically still on silent treatment but I need your help."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohohohohoh?


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shdjs im so tired

**1995**

"What the hell?" Audrey says.

"And so I need your help," Gakushuu says. 

"Back up a bit," John says, "you got hit by a bus?"

"Yes," Gakushuu says.

"And what did you say the fight with Gakuhou was about again?" Alex says.

"I didn't," Gakushuu says. "I insulted his principles and his ambition and called him a coward."

"Oh wow," Mark winces. "Wow, that's…"

"Bad," Alex says. "Really bad."

"Which is why I need your help," Gakushuu says. 

"Gakuhou doesn't like cookies," Audrey says. "Or at least I've never seen him eat any pastries?"

"Really?" Gakushuu frowns, looking down at his bag of chocolate chips. The trip to the supermarket was arduous but necessary, made more convenient with the fact that Gakuhou has been keeping scarce, although Gakushuu came back from not-class last evening to see dinner on the table with a lid put over it, so Gakuhou still cares about him not starving despite being pissed. It warms Gakushuu's heart although it took him 3 tries to walk from the kitchen table to the microwave with a plate of food without tripping over thin air.

"He'll like these," Gakushuu insists. Whatever sugar-free diet Gakuhou has gone on ever since he met these people stops today because Gakushuu knows his father better than any of them, and he knows chocolate chip macadamia brown sugar cookies are on his very short list of weaknesses. "Trust me."

"Okay," Alex says skeptically. "I mean, you know him best," he says in an odd tone of voice. Gakushuu technically does know Gakuhou best, but now he realizes it's a weird angle especially given that he's supposed to know Gakuhou a grand total of almost-four months while they have been his friends for years. 

"I want the fight to stop," John says miserably. "I couldn't even say hi to you without feeling like I betrayed Gakuhou and his entire family." 

And his entire family. Hysterical. "That's okay," Gakushuu says, patting him on the shoulder. "I'll work on it."

"Apologize by making a snack he doesn't even like?" Alex says.

Gakushuu scowls at him. "He'll like it," he says. "You don't have to help."

"I will, I will," Alex says quickly. He picks up an egg from the carton open in the kitchen counter. "What do I have to do?"

Gakushuu tells them. He would feel much more reassured about the quality if he's making it himself but he can't do much with one wrist still fractured. By the end of the world's most frustrating three hours of his life, there's a warm batch of amazing smelling cookies that Gakushuu has to wrangle away from the bunch. 

"These are for Gakuhou!" Gakushuu says.

"We helped made them!" Audrey whines.

"You already had three!" 

"Yeah, but-"

The door opens and they freeze in the middle of the room like a deer in headlights. It's Gakuhou, bag in his hands, and he blinks owlishly at the crowd of people in his apartment before locking eyes with Gakushuu in the middle of the menagerie and his face shutters. "Hi," he says flatly, "you're looking better."

"Y-you're back early," John says. 

"No he's not," Gakushuu says. He leans meaningfully on a crutch and everyone else jumps back to give Gakushuu space. He holds out the tray, cookies steaming slightly on the parchment paper, and watches Gakuhou watch it with a wary gaze. “Have a cookie.”

“I don’t…” Gakuhou says awkwardly, “eat cookies.”

“See,” Alex says, the same time Audrey says, “try one, they’re apology cookies!”

“Apology cookies,” Gakuhous says. He looks decidedly unimpressed.

“Yeah,” Audrey says, “we- well, Shuu worked hard on it-”

“-I called them over to help,” Gakushuu says, “because I couldn’t make them myself. I wanted to apologize, this is a gift.”

Gakuhou hesitates. 

“Come on,” Mark cajoles. “They’re really good.”

“Oh, I’ll try one,” Gakuhou says. He plucks a cookie from the tray and takes a miniscule bite from it, chews slowly, then makes a hum of appreciation. The tension in Gakushuu’s shoulders he didn’t know was there dissipates, and they watch in anticipation as Gakuhou eats the rest of the cookie.

“I didn’t usually like sweets,” Gakuhou says, “but I can appreciate this.”

“Oh,” Gakushuu says, as he watches one more link click into place, how Gakuhou went from the non sweet loving person that his friends knew him as, to someone who ate-cookies-sometimes. The colongomerate cheers and leads down into the living room, passing the plate of cookies between them, and Gakushuu rests his crutches against a wall and eases himself into the couch. Gakuhou settles across him in the loveseat.

“How’dya know he was going to like the cookies?” Mark says. “I mean, we’ve never seen him eat any sweets.”

“Well,” Gakushuu says, and he makes deliberate eye contact with Gakuhou. “I know you.”

Gakuhou holds his stare for two seconds before coughing into his hand and turning away, fluster on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cookies!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a bit of a longer chapter this time! I couldn't figure out where to cut it but also I think I'm about to get assassinated if I drag this on any longer. Wheres the real content, you ask? Why is she still on this weird ass fic?

**1995**

“I’m not going to broach the subject again,” Gakushuu tells Gakuhou when they’re alone again, after the last of their friends leave with cookies and promises to bake again, at least not directly or they’ll just end up going head to head again. “Whether or not choose to stay in America or go back to Japan is none of my concern,” he pauses, “and I don’t think you’re a coward or a hypocrite.” Not yet, anyways.

“I don’t know what I did to warrant that kind of hostility from you,” Gakuhou says.

“You didn’t,” Gakushuu sighs. “I’m just… not in a good place right now.”

Gakuhou is silent. He stands up to clear the plates, Gakushuu leans back on the couch and closes his eyes as the background noise of the kitchen dishwasher start up. Then the seat next to him shifts and Gakuhou’s next to him. “Does your leg still hurt?” 

“Like a bitch,” Gakushuu says. 

“Is there anything I can do?” Gakuhou says.

“I pissed you off and you’re still here helping me,” Gakushuu says. His father really has changed a lot, but has he? The Gakuhou he knew was stingy with his outward affections but never had he once left Gakushuu in a ditch he couldn’t get out of, in an unmanageable situation with no way out. When it truly came down to it Gakuhou was there for him, trying to spur him on in what was possibly the worst way possible. 

"This is how my dad used to give pep talks," Gakushuu offers. "He used to insult my abilities and drive until I got so mad I just had to prove him wrong." Gakuhou looks so aghast in disbelievement which makes Gakushuu giggle. "Is it working?" 

"That's terrible parenting!" Gakuhou says, which makes Gakushuu laugh harder. 

"You think you can do any better?" Gakushuu teases. Spoiler alert: he can't.

"I definitely won't be doing that," Gakuhou mutters. "Your father sounds like a psycho." 

Gakushuu grins. "He fucking is." But then he softens because now was the time for healthy assurance of his love, and reaches over to leans over to jump Gakuhou’s shoulder with his, and then lean over to mess up his hair. In the recent years old age has rounded Gakuhou's hard edges - not that the man would ever admit it - and he lets Gakushuu get away with messing up his hair with an eye-roll and a half-hearted curse. He's, infuriatingly, still taller than Gakushuu and never fails to point it out at any opportunity, but it makes a comical sight for Gakushuu to stretch and use his dad as an armrest. This Gakuhou lets Gakushuu mess up his hair without complaints on ruining his look with his grimy hands.

"For what it's worth," Gakushuu says, "I think you'll make a wonderful teacher," he pauses, "and a great Dad." 

"Thank you," Gakuhou says. 

Things are definitely better between them after that. Gakushuu knocks in Professor Smith’s door, receives a soft “come in”, and hobbles in with his crutches. He shuts the door with a crutch and slides into the seat across the desk, grinning. “Hey Prof.”

“Shuu Tah-nah-kay?” Prof says, squinting at his computer. “My uninvited guest from my lecture. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just got hit by a campus bus,” Gakushuu waves a hand dismissively. “This is not what I came here to discuss.”

Prof leans back in his chair and makes a gesture to say, carry on.

“Please let me explain anything before you attempt to kick me out or call security,” Gakushuu says, which is not a good start because Prof is now looking on high alert, “I’m actually a student of yours from 27 years in the future - no, wait, look, here.” He pulls out his student card - Gakushuu Asano, issued July 2019 - and pulls out Shuu Tanaka’s card as well, setting them side by side. “Tanaka is my alias.”

Prof gapes at him, looking incredulous, like he just wishes to chase Gakushuu out of his office. 

“I’m your student in the future - you’re my thesis mentor. I major in electrical engineering which is why I was surprised to see you in bioinformatics. I built a time machine for my final project, or rather I somehow managed to because I was on drugs when I built it - don’t call the cops, I’m not on drugs now - and I used the machine again when I was sober, so now I’m stuck 27 years in the past and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Prof stares at him.

Gakushuu pulls out some money. “The by date of these notes,” he says, “they’re minted years in the future, I brought them along with me when I time traveled. Even my cards.”

“You’re asking me to believe the impossible,” Prof says, “all this proof, could just be really good counterfeits-”

“Yeah, okay,” Gakushuu says. “I have something else to show you. Do you have a Faraday’s cage?”

Surprisingly enough, he does have one under his desk. Gakushuu hasn’t opened his phone since he got here because he’s not going to risk the sheer amount of information its going to transmit the moment he turns it on, but Prof’s hand has been hovering over the landline and Gakushuu’s sure he’s a minute away from calling for help.

“What the hell is that?” 

“It’s a phone.” Gakushuu pushes the start button.

“That’s not a phone,” Prof says slowly.

“It’s a phone from 27 years in the future - look,” Gakushuu says. The apple logo starts up and bounces around the screen, before it lands on Gakushuu’s homepage. A picture of him and Karma is set on the background. 

“That’s my boyfriend,” Gakushuu says quickly, “we can- it’s legal now. It’s touchscreen.”

Prof gingerly takes the phone, and makes a noise of surprise as his thumb slides across the screen and the page moves. He swipes a few more times, presses his thumb down and gasps when the icons pop in place. “How did you create this?”

“I didn’t,” Gakushuu says. “It’s a phone. They’re very common in the 21st century, new models get released every month, lots of competing brands. This is what we call a smartphone.” He stares at the screen. “That white app icon, the button - no, with the red arrowhead on it - yeah, that one. Click it.”

Prof clicks on the Youtube app. “It’s offline now, so you won’t be able to search anything up,” Gakushuu says, “but it’s video sharing platform that anyone can use and upload material on. Go back now - uh, there’s no button for it, swipe from the left edge of the screen to the center - yep. That little camera icon - next to the - no, yes that one, click it.”

Gakushuu’s gallery pops up. The first few images are nonsensical memes which Karma had sent him, he receives a raised eyebrow from Prof and cringes a little at it, but he scrolls through the gallery until he finds what he’s looking for. A video dated 13 May 2022.

The camera is focused on a bunch of parts on a work desk which Gakushuu fondly remembers, and then his voice fills the room. Ugh, how embarrassing. “This is test 22, 6:55pm January 13 May 2022 - oh, spooky, any last words, professor?”

The camera pans to Professor Smith, crossing his arms and looking mildly amused. The younger version of Professor Smith next to him gasps. 

“Stop goofing off,” Camera-Prof says.

“Yessir,” Gakushuu says. He presses a button, the camera shakes a bit, and then sparks start flying out of the machine. “Oh fu-” Camera-Gakushuu says, and the video cuts.

Young-Prof glares at Gakushuu accusingly. “Was that supposed to be me?”

“Yes,” Gakushuu says. “Your birthday is on August 5, you eat ice with cereal - which is still hella weird, I have to say - and your wife’s name is Caroline Anne.”

Prof blinks once, twice. “That’s my girlfriend!”

“Oh,” Gakushuu says. “Sorry for the spoiler?”

“So if you’re really from the future,” Prof Smith says slowly, “why did you look for me?”

“Well, you are my professor,” Gakushuu says. “I need help figuring the machine out.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Prof says. “I don’t even know what a phone is.”

Huh. “Shit,” Gakushuu says eloquently. Prof rubs the sides of his temples. 

“I’m not saying I believe you because frankly that is ridiculous,” Prof starts, “but that… phone thing, you are either telling the truth or a genius.”

“I’ll bring the machine and my notes over on our next meeting,” Gakushuu says. “I don’t know what’s going on. Either ways you’re a professor and I’m still an undergrad so…”

“Of course,” Prof says. “You’re a fake student, then? How did you manage that?”

“Hacked into Harvard’s system,” Gakushuu shrugs. 

Prof squints at him. “Right. Are you staying in a dorm then?”

“Uh, no, I live off campus.” Gakushuu scratches his head. “With my father.”

“Your father time traveled with you?

“No,” Gakushuu says. “That’s the stupid part. My father is a Harvard alumnus - well he will be, in my time. He’s a student now… so...”

“Oh god,” Prof sighs. “This is ridiculous. I’ll give you the benefit of doubt for today, but I’m going to need to see that machine of yours.”

“Yes Prof,” Gakushuu salutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, it's all coming together.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is incredibly short (as opposed to the previous). That's all I will say.

**1995**

“So you guys are back to normal or something?” Mark says.

“Yep,” Gakushuu says. “Mostly.”

“Thank god,” John says. “I miss your cooking.”

“Hey!” Gakuhou says from the kitchen, affronted.

“Sorry but I won’t be cooking anything for a while,” Gakushuu says, holding up his wrist. It’s in a soft cast now.

“Yeah, but Gakuhou cooks better when you’re here. Must be the emotional support or something,” Mark says. “When you two were fighting, he cooked sad. You could taste actual sadness in the food.”

Gakushuu sniggers. “We’ll be sure to get into less fights this year.” Heh, this year. Just wait until he’s born. 

He drops by Prof’s office a few more times that week, wowing him with his device and his wireless earphones, and also making him laugh with his stupid crayon-thesis. Gakushuu vehemently promises to type it out all pretty before he submits it in 2022. Prof lets him book out the labs, and it’s convenient because Gakushuu doesn’t have a schedule to conflict with the pockets of free time that the lab is left empty, but that means he works odd hours and ends up going back to the apartment at strange timings, namely 11pm at night. 

Gakuhou’s seated in the living room and scribbling away, but he looks up at Gakushuu’s arrival. “Your professor got you working late again?”

“The things we do for our grades,” Gakushuu says. 

“Yikes,” Gakuhou says. “I made you dinner, but it went cold.”

“I should have let you know I would be back late,” Gakushuu says, even though there was no way. A slot cleared for at 9pm because of cancelled appointment and Gakushuu jumped at the chance, and as far as he knew texting hadn’t been invented yet. Had it? Well, Gakuhou’s phone doesn’t look like it could text anyways. 

“It’s fine,” Gakuhou says. 

Gakushuu pulls out a chair next to him. “What you working on?”

“An essay about whether there should be ranking systems in education,” Gakuhou says.

“Should there be?” Gakushuu asks.

“Yes,” Gakuhou says. “Ranking systems can be argued to breed elitism and aggressive competition leading to unnecessary stress, but when administered correctly it can promote healthy competition which does more good than bad.”

“Nice,” Gakushuu says. 

“How’s the leg?”

“Getting better,” Gakushuu says. “I’ll be kicking your ass in the ring in no time.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Gakuhou says. “I’ve been training.”

“Sure,” Gakushuu says. He rests his cheek on his hand. 

“I’ve been…” Gakuhou hesitates, “thinking about what you’ve said. About me running away.”

Gakushuu fidgets uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, I said that because-”

“Healthy competition, right?” Gakuhou interrupts. “I know, you wanted to get your point across, I’m a little assertive in my beliefs, but that’s not what I mean.”

Gakushuu frowns. “What do you mean?” His mind is running amok with the possibilities. Did Gakuhou change his mind about not going back to Japan? Is he considering a career switch? Dropping out? No, that was running away.

“I,” Gakuhou hesitates, looking away, a red dusting on his cheeks. 

“You can tell me,” Gakushuu says gently. 

“I’m not going to run away this time,” Gakuhou says, “so I’m hoping you won’t, too.” Gakushuu opens his mouth to say something, and Gakuhou leans across the table and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I named this fic Back To The Future. Can you imagine if I didn't stay true to the source material? (Don't worry, there's no incest or infidelity or anything of the sort. There is, however, cringe material.)
> 
> Some people, who have had the misfortune of knowing this twist and has been thus threatening my life ever since I told them, had to suffer the past few chapters Knowing. If you have time to waste and feel like cringing in horror with this Knowledge as well, rereading the fic and trying to imagine everything from Gakuhou's POV is fun. Gakushuu has the benefit of an Oblivious filter (as he is privy to the information that that man is his dad) but Gakuhou, poor guy, does not.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hear discourse.
> 
> HAHA GUYS THIS FIC IS CALLED BACK TO THE FUTURE FOR A REASON

“Oh my god,” Gakuhou says, because the chair and Gakushuu in it has just tipped over and landed on the floor with a loud crash.

“Oh my god,” Gakushuu says, for a completely different reason.

“Are you okay?” Gakuhou says, eyes wide, and instead of helping Gakushuu up like a normal damn person, he picks Gakushuu up with a bridal carry and brings him into the living room. Oh dear fucking god.

Gakuhou gently sets him on the couch. Gakushuu’s face is burning. Gakuhou looks at him with such large eyes, pink nose, tongue darting out past his wet lips- oh my GOD! Gakushuu grabs a couch cushion and shoves it in Gakuhou’s face.

“Shuu?”

“Don’t call me that! Oh my god that was gross,” Gakushuu shudders. He needs so much brain bleach. He needs toothpaste. He needs-

-seeing Gakuhou’s hurt and dejected expression, looking like Gakushuu just tore his heart out and stomped on it.

Has Gakushuu said, dear  _ fucking _ god already? 

“No, Gakuhou,” Gakushuu says, cringing. “No, no, listen to me, that was uncalled for - you’re not gross, kissing you isn’t - okay, it - I don’t - no, no, I am not - being gay is still illegal, right? It is, right? I am a huge huge supporter of gay people. I love the gays. I like gays myself - I mean boys - I mean i also like gays, my boyfriend’s gay and I like him-”

Gakushuu should stop talking.

“-But I’m not gay, I mean, I’m bisexual, there’s a difference, it means I like both guys and girls. Romantically, sexually, whatever. I’m not saying you’re gross that you kissed guys because I kiss guys too, I’m saying gross because it’s me - not that I think kissing you is gross - wait, no, I actually do but it’s for a very complicated list of reasons that I promise I cannot tell you right now but I would if I could -”

Is that why his father looked at him like he knew it all along when Gakushuu first introduced Karma as his boyfriend? Because Gakushuu came out to him fucking 20 years ago?

“-But I can’t, okay, please don’t ask me, I really can’t tell you. I didn’t even know you’re gay - bisexual, you like girls too, right? Pretty sure you like girls. I have undeniable proof - I can’t show you the proof either I’m sorry - I didn’t know you liked guys but clearly you knew I did or you wouldn’t have - wow, your gaydar is stronger than mine, this is not something I ever anticipated happening in the whole 22 years of my life and I mean that literally - are you laughing right now?!”

Gakuhou is clutching the sides of his stomach, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. “Watching you freak out is very funny,” Gakuhou tells him.

Gakushuu’s jaw drops. “I’m having an episode!” 

“You could have just said you didn’t like me,” Gakuhou shrugs. “This is the most hilarious way I’ve been rejected.”

“I like you!” Gakushuu protests, and then realizes he’s stuck his foot into his mouth again. He fumes, blushing red, and kicks Gakuhou with his good leg. “But like, in a familial way. Like… you’re my bro. Bros. Five feet apart. Stop laughing! What do you even mean funniest way - have you even been rejected?”

“I don’t really ask people out,” Gakuhou shrugs. “Romantic entanglements are distracting. People ask me out on dates sometimes and I go, but I’m not too invested in most of them.”

“Uh huh,” Gakushuu echoes faintly. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Gakuhou follows that movement with a wry smile.

“I’m not bothered by it,” Gakuhou reassures him quickly. “I mean, I like you. I think you’re nice, funny and cute, and I’ve been wondering what kissing you feels like,” and for a moment his smirk turns devious and Gakuhsuu wants to die on the spot.

“But,” Gakuhou continues, “you don’t like me that way and I’m fine with it.”

Gakushuu opens his mouth, closes it. Looks at him skeptically. “Really?”

“Well, I am sad about it,” Gakuhou says. “It’s not every day you confess to your crush and get rejected.”

Gakushuu feels faint at hearing his father say the word crush and knowing that it’s - no, no. No! Gakushuu had to address this man as Gakuhou now. People had similar names all the time, right? If he thinks of Gakuhou being his father he knows he’ll never be able to look him straight in the eye again.

“Right,” Gakushuu says, voice strangled.

And then Gakuhou looks at him so softly and tenderly that it takes all of Gakushuu’s willpower not to immediately punch him in the face. “Thank you,” Gakuhou murmurs, and - for fucks sake - kisses him on the cheek.

Gakuhou had kissed him on the cheek multiple times when Gakushuu was in the ages 1 to 5. None of those times had made Gakushuu want to fling himself over a bridge - haha, bridge jokes - like this one. Gakuhou smiles at him again, the hand on Gakushuu’s knee feeling very warm and apparent and oh, oh, oh fucking Hell. 

“Goodnight,” Gakushuu says, strangled, and he gets to his room and shuts the door as fast as his broken leg could carry him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short list of things that Gakushuu has done to Gakuhou, that can be interpreted by familial, platonic or completely shippable, depending on whether or not you know that Gakushuu is Gakuhou's son from the future
> 
> 1\. Moved in together   
> 2\. Fought him and kicked his ass and pinned him to the floor at least once  
> 3\. Sang him various love pop songs (that have yet to exist)  
> 4\. Dragged him shopping, dressed him up, called him adorable and took like a million pictures  
> 5\. Met all his friends  
> 6\. Thought about how he fell a little in love with Karma after Karma cooked for him and then immediately proceeded to cook for Gakuhou  
> 7\. Got into a fight about their futures  
> 8\. Baked him cookies  
> 9\. Is hot and showed it off, perhaps (definitely) a tad bit gayer than it needs to be  
> 10\. Probably spent their few months of cohabitance comfortable because he's used to it, not knowing that to an outsider (Gakuhou) it looks like Gakushuu just skipped all the bases and settled into domesticity   
> 11\. Uncannily knows Gakuhou's habits and tastes, somehow manages to guess and get right the things he never knew he needed or tried


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! How has everyone been? It seems that most of you have predicted how the epilogue would go, which is basically:
> 
> Gakushuu, in 2022, kicking down the door to his parents' house: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU NAMED ME AFTER YOUR FUCKING COLLEGE CRUSH  
> Gakuhou: shit 
> 
> Or is it?

**1995**

This is bad.

This is very bad.

“You will not believe what the fuck happened to me,” Gakushuu says, practically kicking the door off its hinges. Prof sits unperturbed at his desk, going over homework assignments.

“Hm?” He says with disinterest.

“Don’t ignore me, I’m in distress,” Gakushuu says. He slams his hands on the desk, rattling it. “You ever watch the movie Back to the Future? Is it out yet? I don’t know, it’s either out or it will come out soon, but it’s a classic, you should catch it if it comes out-”

“It came out last decade,” Prof says. “I’ve watched it. All of the movies in the trilogy.”

“Oh, huh. Don’t look at me like that, old movies are old movies, I don’t memorize their release dates.” Gakushuu throws himself in the chair. “Anyways, that means you know the gist of the movie. Guy comes from the future to the past and finds teenaged versions of his parents.”

“Like you,” Prof says.

“Yes, like me. Exactly like me,” Gakushuu stresses, “so much like me, dear fucking god-”

“One of your parents has a crush on you?” Prof guesses.

“My dad kissed me,” Gakushuu says, covering his mouth with his hand. So much mouthwash and toothpaste and he still hasn’t gotten  _ that _ memory out. Prof looks at him for a beat, two, and then bursts into laughter.

“It’s not funny!” Gakushuu explodes. “It was very traumatizing!”

Prof laughs harder. Gakushuu crosses his arms. “Now he’s going to try and seduce me.”

“Is he?” Prof says, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah,” Gakushuu says. He catches a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the window and sees that his entire face is as red as Karma’s hair. “I know my father. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t take no for an answer - not in the bad way you’re imagining. He doesn’t believe in failure and he thinks he’s a master at manipulating people, so he’s going to try to make me fall for him, especially if he thinks he still has a chance.”

Then Gakushuu shudders. “Which is not a sentence I ever thought I’d have to say, oh my god.”

“Well you could solve it the Back to the Future way,” Prof suggests. “Make your parents fall in love with each other instead of you.”

“From what I gather, they have yet to meet,” Gakushuu says. “Although my mom’s also from Harvard, which makes things easier, I suppose… kind of odd that they have yet to meet, and my father’s graduating soon.”

“What were the circumstances for their original meeting?” Prof says.

Gakushuu thinks. He had always wondered how his parents met, he was aware that they’ve come into contact and stayed in contact through their college years in Harvard but the specifics have always been a mystery to him, especially given that they ran in different social circles, took different majors and were in different years. 

The grand theory he had as a child, after watching several rounds of High School Musical and several other Disney originals, was that his parents met after a rather soulful connection over Karaoke music at a house party. Soon after he realized that despite all his other character attributes, his father was absolutely dreadful at carrying a tune and would have run his mother off instead of persuading her to marry him, so there went that hypothesis.

When asked, his parents would exchange a look that Gakushuu could never interpret and his father would rant and rave about nothing in particular while his mother would pat him on the head and say, “you brought us together, honey,” with a wink. 

A younger, more foolish Gakushuu used to scrunch up his forehead at the thought and be slightly annoyed that she wasn’t being truthful with him and say, as his father stewed in the background, “yeah, okay, so my birth brought you ‘closer together’,” accompanying air quotes, “but I meant before I was born.” Her only response would have been to erupt into peals of laughter.

Standing here right now in the year 1995, Gakushuu realizes his parents are absolute assholes, cheats, liars, jackasses, losers who enjoyed laughing at his misery, people who had the audacity to Know It All Along and Never Tell Him just so they could Laugh At His Misery, did he say liars because technically they were never lying but fuck if Gakushuu didn’t want to sabotage his own birth at this very instant.

"Fucking hell," Gakushuu says. He looks up to meet Prof’s bemused stare, and then leans over the table to look at the desktop. “Can you search up the records for a Dawn Jacklyn Miller, Applied Physics?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John or something: so how is your son doing we haven't heard about him in a while  
> Gakuhou: oh yeah he's just doing stuff  
> Gakuhou: here's a picture of him screaming at a cactus his boyfriend got him  
> John:  
> John: hey man  
> Gakuhou: yeah?  
> John: remember 20 years ago
> 
> And yes, to clarify that instead of my Mamasano character I've been using for my past few fics (Shiina, unnamed), I just made up a brand new persona because the first two didn't fit.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is just... like That

**1995**

Gakushuu’s promptly kicked out of Professor Smith’s office with a “I’m not abusing my powers of authority as a professor of a degree that  _ neither of them take _ to matchmake your parents. I’m still on tenure!” So he’s currently sulking around campus, dragging his crutches behind him and walking circles around the main building. Maybe if he’s lucky, he’d bump into his mother or her friends, like what happened with Gakhou.

Nah, he wouldn’t count on the likelihood of that. 

"Why don't you just tell him you have a boyfriend?" Prof Smith had said.

"Then he'll know!" Gakushuu said emphatically. "He already figures out who I am when I'm… I don't know, they figure it out at some point in time. But I don't exactly what to come out to him 20 years before I actually do, or tell him who my boyfriend is!" 

"Didn't you already panic and tell him about the boyfriend?" Prof pointed out.

"I don't want to do it again," Gakushuu said lamely. "Besides, I think he didn't catch that. He didn't ask about it again, so."

"Hm," Prof had said. "Please leave now. You're very annoying and I have a class in 10."

"But wait," Gakushuu had said. So he's here now, having walked around the football field thrice, and he decides it's time to go to the apartment to sulk instead.

Gakuhou's lounging on the couch when Gakushuu gets back. There's an empty seat next to him that Gakushuu instinctively takes and sighs into the very familiar scent and very familiar weight of his father's shoulder, until that arm is wrapped around him and Gakushuu feels the weight of Gakuhou press against him does he  _ remember  _ and jump five feet into the air - as much as he can with a broken leg anyways - and clambers into the loveseat across him.

Gakuhou is grinning at him.

"Stop doing things that are gay," Gakushuu hisses, face burning. "You'll regret it in two decades, I swear to god."

Gakuhou doesn't look remotely offended. "It'd be hard to regret anything that keeps us together for two decades," he teases.

Gakushuu points an accusing finger and glares. "I'm going to make sure you remember exactly how fucking stupid you sound in 27 years." 

Gakuhou opens his mouth again but Gakushuu throws a pillow smack in his face. He hates this, he does. 

“What do you want for dinner tonight?” Gakuhou asks.

“Straight spaghetti,” Gakushuu says into the seat armrest. He rolls onto his stomach and buries his head in his hands, then peeks one bright violet eye out to glare at Gakuhou. Honestly, developing a crush on someone that looks almost like you? Wasn’t that a little narcissistic? 

Gakuhou rolls his eyes good naturedly. “Dried pasta?”

“Yes,” Gakushuu says sourly.

“Sure,” Gakuhou says. He walks past and leans down to ruffles Gakuhsuu’s hair, and Gakushuu makes a noise like a dying whale. He thinks back to every single time his father ever ruffled his hair, cringes at the sheer awkwardness of it, and then wonders if it was a reason why Gakuhou never ever played with his hair like his mother did, or showed him much physical affection. Sure, Gakushuu was a little touch-starved, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to look his father in the eye or kiss him on the cheek for a little filial son display of parental love ever again, so he thinks they’re even.

“I miss Karma,” Gakushuu mumbles.

“What?” Gakuhou calls from the kitchen.

“This is karma for everything I’ve ever done in my life!” Gakushuu yells. 

“Aww,” Gakuhou says. “I’ll-”

“-Don’t finish that sentence, I swear to god,” Gakuhsuu says. “My pasta better be the best fucking thing I’ve ever eaten for all the emotional stress you’re putting me through!”

“It’s made with love, honey!”

“Please,” Gakushuu says, “poison it.” He gets an answering laugh, and he slinks deeper into the couch. A new apartment, Gakushuu thinks, is going to be on his list of demands to buy his silence when he gets back to 2022, never mind that he can afford it himself because that was not the point. A new car, as well. 

“I’m going out,” Gakushuu says. “I want to buy a sweater that says Harvard ‘95 specifically.”

“Okay,” Gakuhou says, “don’t get hit by another bus!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The future, Karma: looks like we both think Gakushuu is pretty cute haha  
> Gakuhou:  
> Gakushuu:  
> Karma: Anyways we're engaged-


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's here?

**1995**

Dawn Jacklyn Miller is, as far as Gakushuu knows, not looking for a roommate. Even if she was, well, Gakushuu already had a roommate, and moving out would be running away, and Gakushuu doesn’t run away. That, and it would be hard to matchmake Gakuhou with Dawn if he was trying to avoid them. 

“I’m going to go get my cast removed,” Gakushuu says.

“Don’t you have a week left to go?” Gakuhou says.

“Five days,” Gakushuu says. “I’m getting antsy.”

“Want me to come?” Gakuhou says. 

“Nah,” Gakushuu says. 

“Stay safe,” Gakuhou says, pauses, then, “you look cute today.”

“Oh my god,” Gakushuu says. Gakuhou flashes him a quick grin, and then settles in to work on his assignment. Face burning, Gakushuu makes a tactical retreat. 

He goes for a final check up. The doctor gives him the okay, removes his casts, lets him roll his wrists and stretch his legs. Gakushuu not ableist but he's glad to be able to walk like a normal person again, especially since it streamlines the proceeding methodologies of having to find and approach Dawn and somehow set her up with Gakuhou. There's no time to be wasted so he heads down to Science, then stands dumbly in the middle of the corridor wondering how to enact his plans. 

Gakushuu discretely checks Harvard's database on his phone. Dawn should be in a lesson that should end in 15 minutes, so Gakushuu finds a place to sit and wait. Espionage, he thinks, grinning to himself. 

Pauses.

Fuck, her lecture hall is all the way on the other side of campus. Time to test out that freshly healed leg. Is there someone yelling at him? The voice of his common sense sounds oddly like Gakuhou, weird.

Gakushuu is glad he's not in the 21st century anymore because otherwise there would have been multiple camera videos, a vine or musically or tiktok or ziplet or whatever they're called of him sprinting across the campus courtyard, tripping over a step, and then face-planting onto the floor in front of a group of now-shocked college students as leave their lecture hall and leap out of Gakushuu's way.

Pain shoots up Gakushuu's leg. He hates himself, he really does. 

"Oh my god!" Someone says. Yep, oh my god in fucking deed. Gakushuu lifts his head, squints past the blurry faces in his periphery, and stares at the hall number. At least he got that one right? 

"Are you okay?" A girl asks. Not Dawn. 

"Nope," Gakushuu says. He blinks up at the girl and thinks, he’d already thrown away this much of his dignity and if all things went well, he wouldn’t be staying any longer to shred the rest of it. What did he have to lose? “Do you know a Dawn Miller?”

“Dawn?” Someone else says. “Yeah she’s in the course- hey did anyone see Dawn?”

There’s a bit of a commotion and Gakushuu wonders why people are still crowding around him. Is life so boring in the 90s that seeing someone trip over a raised step is peak entertainment? Gakushuu doesn’t even bat an eye at flashmobs or impromptu clout-farming stunts happening around him anymore, social media truly took the shame out of people. 

The red sea parts, and Gakushuu gapes. “Your hair is pink.”

“Um,” a younger version of his mother with pink hair stares at him, lips pursed. “Did you… call for me? I’m Dawn.”

“Yes,” Gakushuu says. He’s still lying on the floor which makes for awkward conversation, so he rolls over and stands up. His leg doesn’t feel broken, which is good, but it feels more injured than it had been before the tumble, which is bad. Gakushuu winces as he tests his weight, rubs his head, then looks back at Dawn and the rest of her classmates who are still regarding him with odd curiosity.

“Hi, I’m Shuu,” Gakushuu says, putting on his best smile. “I apologize for the fanfare.”

Dawn gives him the same expression he always sees on her face when he accidentally pours orange juice into his cereal and makes it through half the bowl before noticing. Gakushuu feels like he’s stepped into mud but he looks down and no, he hasn’t.

“Did you need me for anything?” Dawn says, sounding a little nicely amused.

Dammit. Gakushuu hadn’t thought this far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teacher: so why haven't you expelled Akabane yet  
> Gakuhou: (thinks about his son who bears a scarily uncanny resemblance to his old college ~~crush~~ roommate, and said college roommate's boyfriend who bares a scarily uncanny resemblance to one Karma Akabane)  
> Gakuhou: he raises our grade point average


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dying as I wrote this, just so you know.
> 
> I didn't update yesterday (as you all can see)! There's no reason I just had a late day and was tired.

**1995**

Gakushuu feels incredibly sleazy. He needs to take a long shower, buy a bath bomb, cleanse himself of his sins. Being his young father's weird one-sided crush was bad enough but he just asked his mother - his fucking 21 year old mother with Bright Pink Hair - on a date! A date!

And worst still, she said yes! 

The silver lining out of all of this, Gakushuu tries to convince himself, is that he knows his parents will like each other, at the very least. Despite the obvious narcissism where this attraction goes, Gakushuu was after all one half of the person they chose to marry, so he tries to reassure himself that's the basis for their attraction.

This was cool. No, this was great.

"You know, I thought you were weird at first," Dawn is saying, "but you're actually kinda cute." She bats her lashes at him, a dimple peeking out on her cheek. If Gakushuu smiles right, he has one too.

"Uh huh," he says faintly. 

Dawn leans over the coffee table and gives him a peck on the cheek. Gakushuu's face flames red with embarrassment and shame, Dawn giggles. This was the worst plan in the history of worst plans. Gakushuu hates having his father's brand of charismatic especially since HIS FATHER'S BRAND OF CHARISMATIC MANAGED TO MARRY THIS ONE WOMAN SPECIFICALLY!!! Bad!

"This food is mediocre," Gakushuu says. They're fine but he just needs to speed the process up so he can pretend all this never happened. "I can do better. Dinner tomorrow?"

Dawn beams pleasantly. "I love a man who can cook!"

Gakushuu is so glad he made Gakuhou learn to cook.

"Great," Gakushuu says. "I'll give you my address." 

Gakuhou's address.

He's the best wingman ever. 

And honestly the worst. 

Of course he's a brilliant strategist, a trait he's honed for years under the principal's watchful eyes. He may or may not have logged onto Harvard's system again and may or may not have tweaked some scheduling times, double book a hall and shift a staff meeting by an hour. He also may or may not have timed his meeting with Dawn just right so she's just stepped into the house with a bright smile when the door opens again and Gakuhou is there, holding his books and blinking in shock at the stranger in his apartment.

"I thought you had a class now," Gakushuu says, doing his best to sound surprised, because he may or may not have something to do with the fact that he doesn't.

"It got cancelled," Gakuhou says. "Hi." 

"Hi," Dawn says, waving a little. 

Gakushuu steps up. "Dawn, this is my roommate Gakuhou. Gakuhou, this is Dawn."

"You guys are brothers?" Dawn says.

"No," Gakushuu says, before Gakuhou responds. "Just asian."

"Am I…" Gakuhou says, looking between them with a furrow in his brow and a twitch in his smile that one would normally be unable to pick out unless they knew Gakuhou very well. "Interrupting something?"

"Oh, no," Gakushuu says. 

Dawn gives him a slightly confused and disappointed look but smooths her smile again. His parents were such actors. "Of course not," she says, "I just got here."

"Why don't you put your stuff down?" Gakushuu says pleasantly to both of them. "Dinner's almost ready, I just have to prepare one last thing-"

"I can do it," Gakuhou says quickly.

"Do you know how to sous vide?" Gakushuu says, raising an eyebrow.

Gakuhou stays silent.

"He can cook," Gakushuu says to Dawn, offering her an easy grin, and she falters a split second. "Just not as good as me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, googling: what's the hardest dish to cook  
> The internet: Bake the whole of alaska


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was kinda excited for this chapter so I'm posting it a little early.
> 
> That statement spells trouble, doesn't it? Heheh. You all: whatever this girl is excited about always turns out fucking weird

**1995**

Gakushuu doesn't think he's ever had a meal with his parents this  _ stressful  _ in his entire life.

It's close contender is the dinner shortly after his father had slapped him across the classroom in his last year of middle school, which involved a lot of passive aggressive knife scraping, an exotic stir fry of bull's penis, and unnecessarily rare steaks. After that comes the brunch they had when Gakushuu was in his second year of high school, in a french restaurant in another city which he's sure they're on the blacklist of. There was a threat of divorce, a lot of escargots, and two crying waiters. 

Gakushuu clears his throat after their third pause of uncomfortable silence. "So this dinner didn't turn out as planned," Gakushuu starts, which makes Dawn wince and Gakuhou glare down at his poached fish.

Gakushuu sighs. He didn't know what he expected. Sure, he'd hoped for the optimal scenario where easy conversation flows between the two, they realize their passionate and magnetic attraction for each other, and forget Gakushuu exists. It turns out that in reality, putting two people who are hopefully open to have a romantic relationship with the same person on the same room tends to cause a lot of awkwardness.

Gakushuu thinks back on his entire life thus far and the two people that run it. Both his parents were educated intellectuals from the same college, apparently hit it off and decided to migrate (or simply move back, in Gakuhou's case) to Japan and start a family. They were both interested in education and the learning process, they both liked open concept rooms with their curtains open, and they were both terrible parents.

"I went back to the hospital the other day," Gakushuu starts, and both of them look to him. "Apparently I sprained my leg again."

"Didn't you just go to get your cast removed?" Gakuhou says. He peeks under the table but Gakushuu's leg isn't bandaged up anymore because that was a lie. He did strain it a little but he's sure it's healed otherwise, he did three cartwheels yesterday to prove it.

But there was one thing his parents had in common, at the very least, that seemed to translate through space-time regardless of whether they knew he was their son or not. They loved talking about him.

"You got a cast removed?" Dawn says, looking between them. "What happened?"

"I got hit by a bus," Gakushuu says, the same time Gakuhou says, "he's an idiot who got hit by a bus."

"It was not my fault," Gakushuu says. "I was just standing there like a normal person on the road-"

"Why were you standing in the middle of the road?" Dawn says, aghast.

"I was not standing in the middle of the road," Gakushuu says. "I was standing at the side of it. How was I supposed to know a bus was going to curve around the bend at the side of a road?"

"Well where else is a bus supposed to curve?" Gakuhou says. 

"And you decided to run across the school like a madman the day you got your cast removed?" Dawn says.

"Wait - he did what?" Gakuhou says. 

"You will not  _ believe _ ," Dawn says, "the tumble he took. Face planted so hard I thought his nose was going to break!"

Gakushuu sits back and takes a sip of his juice. Great.

"So he spent several hundred dollars just like that," Gakuhou is saying, with a snap of his fingers. "A few suit jackets and dress shirts. He still hasn't worn the whole ensemble out yet."

"You're the one to talk," Gakushuu interjects, feeling the dire need to defend himself given that Gakuhou's fashion sense takes the same turn in a few years and there's nothing embarrassing like being accompanied by a man in a 3 piece suit to a grocery store to pick up a loaf of bread, while said man spoke in his phone about a multi-million dollar endeavor as Gakushuu clutched onto his Marigold White Grain staring straight ahead at the express line. You couldn't quite pretend you weren't together when you and the other person looked exactly fucking alike. 

"Why would you need dress shirts in college?" Dawn says. "That's overkill! It's sweltering hot here!"

"The aesthetic," Gakushuu stresses. He's not having this conversation with the woman who wore three scarves when they went on vacation in Prague, in the middle of summer. 

"And have you seen the pants!" Gakuhou exclaims, uncharacteristically boisterous. Gakushuu glaces surreptitiously at the juice. Did he add too much vodka?

"They look painted on!" Dawn shrieks.

Gakushuu slams his hand on the table. "I look good!' 

"Yeah you do," Dawn says saucily, the same time Gakuhou says, "I know," and they both exchange a look. Then burst into undignified giggles.

Gakushuu feels warm and fuzzy all over. It might be the familial love or the alcohol he doesn't know. He stands up to put the plates back but sways a little on his feet, he must be drunker than he thought. "All right, both of you," he says, clapping a hand to get their attention, "you have morning classes tomorrow. It's 10 at night."

"How'dya know I have m-morning classes?" Dawn demands.

"He knows everything," Gakuhou says, eyes wide. "Shuu! What are… tomorrow's lottery numbers?"

"I have no clue," Gakushuu deadpans. What a hilariously appropriate time travel joke. "Drink some water, I spiked the punch."

"Don't tell me what to do, you… you… side hair cutter."

"This," Gakushuu says, "is called an undercut. And I look good in it." 

"Yeah," Gakuhou agrees. 

"I should get one," Dawn says. 

"Don't cut your hair," Gakuhou says. "I like it pink." What a charmer.

Dawn giggles. "My hair's not actually pink, silly," she says. "It's more like his color." She points at Gakushuu. Then she looks back at Gakuhou, "you two look so alike! Are you sure you're not siblings?"

"Very," Gakushuu says. "Alright, it's time to go home. Gakuhou, walk Dawn home."

"Why?" Gakuhou says. 

"I can get home myself!" Dawn says.

"Because my leg's injured," Gakushuu reminds them. "Do you want to let her wander around campus drunk?"

Gakuhou seems to sober up a little then, and he nods seriously at Gakushuu as if he's been presented an important quest. Gakushuu makes them both drink water and then sends them out the door, pretending to close it, and then cracking it open a fraction to see Dawn giggle and latch onto Gakuhou's arm as the walk down towards the lobby. He grins to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my least and most popular fic

**1995**

"So…" Gakushuu says the next day, just as Gakuhou trudges into the apartment with a wince that betrays the headache he has. "How was your morning?"

Gakuhou glares at him and throws his stuff down in the couch. "I still have a terrible hangover," he complains, "my professor could tell I drank last night. How much alcohol did you even add?"

"Genuinely no clue," Gakushuu says. 

"Ugh," Gakuhou groans. "Don't talk to me." He disappears into the kitchen and Gakushuu hears the sound of drawers opening, cutlery being tossed around, something that sounds like a bowl dropping and then a loud "Fuck!" Gakushuu snickers. 

Gakuhou emerges with a steaming mug and sits across Gakushuu. "I hate you," he says.

"Feeling's mutual," Gakushuu says. Ah, the familiar dynamic of their squabbles. "I was thinking about inviting Dawn over again, what do you say?"

Gakuhou hunkers down in his seat and scowls at his mug, mood suddenly sour. "Right," he mutters. "Sorry I interrupted your  _ date _ ," he practically spits. "Tell me when next time and I'll make myself scarce."

Gakushuu rolls his eyes. "Jealousy isn't a good look on you, and I'm not trying to date her. Come on, you had plenty fun with her, she's a nice girl."

"I suppose," Gakuhou says. "She didn't seem to think it wasn't a date."

"She seemed satisfied with her escort last night," Gakushuu points out cheekily. He may have stayed up for… experimental purposes and noticed that Gakuhou came home far later than a walk to the nearby dormitories warranted, with messier hair than he normally had and a bit of pink on his collar that he didn't manage to wipe off. 

Gakuhou turns a little red. "Well we were both kinda drunk," he justifies, "and she said you didn't  _ actually  _ ask her out so - " then his pauses, face comically scrunched up, and Gakushuu imagines math equations floating across Gakuhou's face. 

"You planned that, didn't you?!" Gakuhou explodes. "I bet your leg's not even injured!"

"Wait!" Gakushuu says, but then Gakuhou vaults over the coffee table and tackles him to the floor. Gakushuu shrieks and they crash down, and he blames the element of surprise for how easily Gakuhou traps him in a headlock.

"H-hey!" Gakushuu wheezes, "w-what is it called when you m-murder your friend?!"

"What?!" Gakuhou says. He tightens his grip as Gakushuu tries to throw him off.

"H-h-homiecide!" Gakushuu says. Giggles breathlessly and tries to struggle free.

"That's not even a word!" Gakuhou yells.

"It is if - ack! If you're not an old man!" Gakushuu counters.

"We're the same goddamn age!" Gakuhou says.

"You wish, old man!" Gakushuu says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is, as you can probably tell, slowly coming to an end. it has lasted way longer than it planned to be
> 
> What sort of nonsense would you like to see next on your feed?


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: posts fluff  
> Me: I sure hope my readers enjoy this :)  
> You people, paranoid: angst angst angst angst angst

**1995**

Dawn comes over again. Gakushuu tries to hide his delight.

He fails.

His parents are both intelligent and sharp people, Gakuhou especially so, and hanging off his arm Dawn may seem like a trophy wife but her tongue cuts as quick as his does. Watching the both of them interact at this time - laughing out loud without tact or grace like teenagers, Gakuhou with messy hair and Dawn's bright pink, her scuffed converses and his rumpled shirt, they look so incredibly normal and human. It's hard to picture the kind of person they'll grow up to be, cold and merciless, and that they'll raise a son equally so.

Sometimes Gakushuu wonders how he would have turned out if he never got out of that house. He had run away when he was 16 down several streets to Karma's place, a living space just as big and empty and suffocating as his was, back when they were both awkwardly navigating the odd friendship they had that evolved into the basis for their romance. He only lasted there for two months, and at the end of two months his father's car pulled up at the school gates and his mother looked impassively at him from the passenger seat, fingers tapping against the dashboard. He slid into the back and clicked his seatbelt in and his father said, "how was school?" 

Gakushuu had said, "it was fine." 

They had dropped him off at Karma's place, so it was clear they have been aware of his whereabouts this entire time. Gakushuu moved back in that night. 

They were strange, like that. With Gakushuu there was no communication between their family, or what a normal person would constitute communication in the first place that he could see. He knows for a fact that his father underwent his persona switch when his favorite student died, but sometimes he wonders about his mother, who had somehow turned into the woman who drew thin red lines on his worksheets which mirrored the ones he drew on his skin, from this bright girl laughing at a newspaper headline with her feet crossed and her shirt untucked. Did she love the man she married more than her son, to be able to turn a blind eye to all the things he did and change herself with him? Gakushuu wants to loathe her for it, but he can't.

"Hey!" Gakuhou says, snapping him back to reality, and Gakushuu realizes he'd been silent for a while. "Penny for your thoughts?" 

"Just thinking about home," Gakushuu says. 

"Aww," Dawn says. "What was it like?"

Gakushuu looks at both of them and smiles a little. "A lot like this."

"You have siblings?" Gakuhou says.

"No, but my parents are unhinged," he says. "Like you two."

Gakuhou gives a squawk of indignation - Gakushuu told him about his dad - and Dawn looks between them, half-smiling and confused. Gakushuu sits back.

"They're," he makes an aborted motion. "high, I have to say. Not drugs - although I wouldn't be surprised if I'm completely honest - but high standards, wealth, social status, that sort of thing. They talk like they know they're better than you and walk like they know you'll move out of the way for them."

"That's…" Dawn says, brows furrowed.

"Like old money?" Gakuhou guesses.

"No, they're self made," Gakushuu shakes his head. "Which means they get to hold their heads high because they've earned it."

"Are they putting a lot of pressure on you?" Gakuhou asks, concerned, how funny the question came from him although it would be equally as ironic from Dawn. "Pressure, yes," Gakushuu admits, "I have standards to live up too and they both want me to go further than they did. I came here after them, actually, they were both Harvard Alumni." 

"You're a Harvard family!" Dawn gasps. "That's hella impressive!"

"Yeah, well," Gakushuu says, because that's right. There's a bout of silence then, Gakushuu sighs and leans back away from them, and closes his eyes. A few moments later the couch dips and Gakuhou settles on one side of him, Dawn on the other. 

"We won't pressure you," Dawn says, laying her head delicately on his shoulder, and Gakuhou mimics her in a more humorous form, and Gakushuu almost wishes he could laugh to break the tension or smile or make a stupid joke to say everything's okay, but he says nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean-


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KJHGFHJKLG yall

**1995**

Gakushuu goes to visit Prof Smith again who seems pleasantly surprised at his healed leg. 

"I introduced them," Gakushuu says proudly, plopping on the office chair. "Dawn and Gakuhou. They hit it off."

"You don't happen to be the blond kid who hit a school record running from one end of the campus to another in a minute 54 seconds and then tripping over a raised step and skidding five feet on his face, would you?" Prof says.

"Aw hell," Gakushuu says. "Who saw me?"

"The faculty," Prof says. "The security tapes were funny."

"Isn't that a breach of professionalism and privacy?" Gakushuu says. Prof shrugs.

"Right," Gakushuu says. "Anyways, I set my parents up, they made out, so they'll get together and-"

"How did you approach your mother?" Prof says. "Your entrance was rather… dramatic which would have no issue in being an attention grabber but you surely didn't start off with the suggestion of introducing her to a man."

Gakushuu groans. He buries his face in his hands.

"What was that?" Prof says.

"I asked her on a fucking date!" Gakushuu yells. His forehead hits the table.

There's a pause. "And she said yes?"

"I know!" Gakushuu groans, again. "She kissed me! On the cheek, the cheek."

"But she wasn't that interested in you or she wouldn't have made out with your father," Prof says. What a strange sentence that makes shivers crawl up Gakushuu's spine. "Does that mean your father has, ah, gotten over you?" 

"I hope so," Gakushuu says. "I don't know, they're not even dating, they just kissed once. God, do I have to ensure that they date? To guarantee no room for mistakes?"

“Perhaps,” Prof says.

Gakushuu looks up and narrows his eyes. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

Prof sips his tea. “This is delicious,” he says. “What is it?”

“Sencha. Please don’t sip the tea like that, you’re giving me Kermit vibes.”

Prof squints at him. “The… muppet?”

“It’s a meme from... twenty five years in the future,” Gakushuu says. He’d tried his best to explain memes but the concept hasn’t been fully grasped, but of course that was attributed to Gakushuu being unable to articulate the true influence of what memes were and how they came about. You didn’t just rationalise memes, one fine day something on the internet exploded and you accepted them into your soul and that was it.

“You falling onto your face is a meme,” Prof says, and well, that was pretty much the whole gist of a meme.

“I feel like I have to go soon,” Gakushuu blurts. “I can’t stay here any longer.”

“Well the machine is almost finished,” Prof says. They’re figured out most of the mechanics with it, all that was left was to fine-tune the machine and calibrate it so Gakushuu would go back to his time and not into the endless void of space. How high-Gakushuu figured this all out in one single night sober-Gakushuu still didn’t know.

“May I know what’s the urgency?” Prof says.

“My parents,” Gakushuu says. “I can’t…” His hands curl into fists at his thighs. “I can’t be around them any longer, every time I see them…” He dips his head, “I’m reminded of who they end up becoming.”

“Who do they end up becoming, Gakushuu?” Prof says gently.

Somewhere down the line twenty seven years later Gakushuu ends up telling Professor Smith everything, because of how he always knew what to say and how to listen to him and treated him like he always wished his parents did, and he would have never guessed it was because he would have known all this years before he was supposed to even meet Gakushuu. 

He tells him as much as he can before his voice chokes up and he has to cover his face with his hands and blink his eyes as quickly as he can. He tells him about Ikeda, about how Gakuhou never loved anyone else like he loved Ikeda and how he tore apart the dreams he’s been trying to build up since even before college to build a prison of a home and a school. How his mother never did anything to stop him, who must have seen some sort of logic in his plans and leashed Gakushuu through them, how the two of them were together today laughing on the couch like they weren’t going to make Gakushuu wish he was never born.

“I want to hate them, I want to tell them every single thing they did to me,” Gakushuu sobs. “I want to make them regret, make them… make them stop it before it all happens, but I can’t, I can’t. I’m so scared that I might do something wrong and… I don’t know, time would collapse it itself or I’m going to go back to a home that I don’t recognize and it doesn’t recognize me-”

"Gakushuu," Prof says gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I cannot even begin to comprehend what you're going through. I wish I could offer you some advice, but all I can say is that we should quickly finish the device." He pauses, "unless."

"Yeah?" Gakushuu rubs his eyes with the back of his hands.

“Unless you do change it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (surprised pikachu face)


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sheer number of Time Paradox comments I get
> 
> Guys I can't write time paradoxy stuff! It's too complicated and way too much energy to be put in a fic!  
> (ahem) me says like I haven't written... 6 fics messing with time/chronology

**1995**

“Everything you do here,” Professor Smith says, “you’re setting into motion a cascade of events - a butterfly effect - of everything that will happen in the future. You are not changing the future beyond what is comparable, you are the current future that has already happened in motion.”

“What if I do something that changes the world too far and the time stream breaks? What if a time paradox happens?" 

"It will not happen," Prof says firmly. "You've already lived through the consequences of your actions here. You've influenced so much more than you imagine."

"But I don't know if I'm doing the right thing," Gakushuu says.

"None of us ever do," Prof says. "The people your parents came to be might have been because of you. They're going back to japan, they're going to get married, and your father will set up a school. Ikeda was not and will never be your fault."

"I called him a coward," Gakushuu says. "I told him never to run away. What if that was the wrong thing? Maybe he should have run away. Maybe not running was what made all of the trauma internalize badly and ruin his life!"

"But without your advice he'd never go back to Japan in the first place," Prof says. "You are being too hard on yourself."

"The lives of so many people hinge on this!" Gakushuu sobs. "All the students in Kunugigaoka! Even me! What if I've doomed them into a horrible life!"

"You are  _ not _ responsible for the decisions your parents make," Prof snaps. "They are their own damn people and their mistakes are their own, not yours. People do not make large career decisions or parenting choices based off what their roommate said to them one time twenty years ago."

"I-"

"Your father does not wait for your mother and go back to Japan to prove you wrong. He does it because he wishes to, because he'd come to his own conclusions and made his own decisions. You did not give him an order, you did not force him, you spoke to him because you wanted what's best for him. Decisions he will make years in the running are not your fault." 

Gakushuu cries. "I w-was there through it. I w-was a bad kid be-because I didn't l-l-listen and w-was bad and re-reminded him of everything I said to him when Ikeda died."

"Gakushuu-"

"T-t-they found out who I w-was! They k-know! How long did it take? Why didn't t-they say anything? T-they still did all-all those things knowing who I w-was! T-they hated me!"

"Gakushuu!" Prof leaps out of his seat. Gakushuu clings onto him, biting his tongue and burying his face in his shoulder. He's a quiet crier.

"They could never hate you," Prof says, but what did he know? 

Prof makes them both more Sencha green tea, lets Gakushuu curl up in his office chair in silence and doodle over his table with marker. Gakushuu sniffles as he draws a little green tea bag on the side and says, “I remember seeing this when I came to your office. The drawing was all weathered down. I thought one of your kids drew it.”

“I have kids?” Prof says.

Gakushuu gives him a shaky playful smile and shrugs. It earns him a soft smack on the top of his head.

“So what are you going to do?” Prof asks. 

“I’m not going to tell them anything about me,” Gakushuu says. “I don’t think I could live knowing that they treated me the way I did while knowing who I was. They’ll figure it out down the line but not now.”

“Of course,” Prof says, and pats his hand. 

“I’m going to have to leave,” Gakushuu says. “I obviously can’t graduate with the cohort. I need more incentive for them - well Gakuhou in particular to follow me back to Japan.” He pauses. “I’m going to say my dad died.”

Prof blinks. “What?”

“My entire family died,” Gakushuu says, and nods to himself. “Yes, I’m the sole heir of our entire estate now and I have to go back immediately to handle the proceedings. I’ll say I’m from Tokyo, because my dad’s from Nagoya, but he’ll be crazy enough to move to another city like that.”

“Confident, aren’t you,” Prof says.

Gakushuu sniffles again. “I own his fucking life. I know he’s going to follow me anywhere and apparently mom’s crazy enough to do that too because they apparently named their first and only son after their fucking shared college crush!” He slams the table. “God, how didn’t I see it before? My name - fake name - is Shuu, they named me - Me! Their kid! Gaku - Shuu! That’s the fucking worst-”

Prof slowly slides the cup of tea closer to his side of the desk, out of the way of stray angry hand gestures.

“-like what if I named my kid after my… I don’t know, first girlfriend? That’s stupid, that’s stupid! Would you name your kid after your first relationship? Huh?”

“I…” Prof blinks. “Probably not.”

“Probably nor!” That’s right! Because that’s a stupid thing to do!” Gakushuu fumes. “I can’t believe they named me after a fucking ship name?”

“Gakushuu is the name of a ship?” 

:It’s a… pop culture thing. Shipping. It’s… you know I’m explaining all this stuff to you but if you say any of them by accident you’ll look like an idiot.”

“That’s…” Prof says, “turnt.”

Gakushuu snickers. “I’m feeling a lot better, thank you. I don’t think you know what turnt means. I’m going to go yell at them now for the stupid choices they make that is none of my fault, and then I’m going to orchestrate the death of my entire bloodline by… radioactive takoyaki.” 

“Isn’t that bad luck?” Prof says. “To pretend your family is dead?”

“Let me have this,” Gakushuu says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you guys think is the best and worst thing I've ever written?


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I said I like rarepairs I didn't mean ASANO FAMILY INCEST AS A RAREPAIR
> 
> What a Good Fucking Point, says me as I type these sentences

**1995**

“Oh fuck!”

Gakuhou and Dawn, who were one second ago doing things Gakushuu never wants to never see his parents do again, especially not with such a teenage fervor that puts even he and Karma to shame.The two spring apart, red faced, Gakuhou looking especially guilty and Dawn looking not at all. 

“You’re back early,” Gakuhou manages, voice strangled. Dawn giggles.

“I wish I wasn’t,” Gakushuu says. “Carry on, pretend I’m not here. I’ll go put my noise cancelling headphones on… if they exist. Not that they do, yet.”

“That’s innovative,” Gakuhou says.

“Why don’t you join us?” Dawn says salaciously.

“Hey!” Gakuhou says weakly..

“Not like you’d mind,” Dawn says. “I’m not blind-”

“I changed my mind about the non existent headphones,” Gakushuu announces to the room at large, pointedly not looking at the two idiots who are still braced by the wall. “I’m going to Walmart to buy a gun and shoot myself in the head.” He swiftly turns on his heel and walks out the door, along the corridor, down the stairs and out of the building onto the main street, then covers his mouth with his hands and screams into it like a madman.

People immediately start giving Gakushuu wide berth. Whatever.

He’s not going back in two fucking hours. Nope, nada, no way.

Hmm… they’re teenagers after all. One hour?

“I need a coffee,” Gakushuu says. He ends up buying five, but two of them are for the two horny people ensuring Gakushuu’s birth - about five years too early - so really, only three are for himself. That’s still too less coffee in his opinion. His plan was to go into too much of a sugar high and then immediately crash after, and hopefully wake up the next morning with no memory of anything ever happening.

He buys another bottle of vodka on the way back. By which time - forty five minutes later - Dawn and Gakuhou are on the couch with no indication of any defiling of furniture in Gakushuu’s absence, but he makes a face anyways to their waves. He goes to the kitchen, grabs a salad bowl and a spoon, and sets the two coffees for the kids on the coffee table. Mixes all three of his iced frappuccinos into the bowl, tips in half the bottle of vodka, and then sprays a third of a can of whip cream on top. 

“Self care,” Gakushuu says to himself, and eats a spoonful. 

Across him, Gakuhou and Dawn are watching with apprehension, befuddlement and confusion on their faces. Gakuhou looks both pissed and delighted, Dawn looks like she wants to throw her own coffee in his face.

“I… hate… both of you,” Gakushuu slurs, three quarters partway into his bowl. The vodka is being passed between dawn and Gakuhou. Gakushuu’s somehow between them again, legs kicked up on the coffee table, which is something Gakuhou - his father, not this young stupid ass version of - would cuff him at the back of the head for. 

“That is so gross,” Dawn observes with awe.

“You are just drinking them separately,” Gakushuu says. “That’s inefficient. This is efficient.”

“It’s still horrible,” Gakuhou says, wrinkling his nose. 

Gakushuu stares at the spoon, drops it into the bowl, and then slurps directly from the rim. He earns two disgusted noises from his couch-mates.

“I’m so fucked up,” Gakushuu says, marveling at how drunk he feels and how he somehow kept his cover up all this while. Speaking of. “Do you want to hear a secret?”

“What?” Dawn says.

“I want a baby,” Gakushuu says. “But I know I’m going to be a bad parent. I’m going to mess the baby up. Me and - me and my - my partner thought about it but we both have really shitty - no , wait, full offense - parents and we both think we’ll fuck up. You know?”

“Oh,” Gakuhou says. 

“And also like, my partner is - he doesn’t have a uterus and neither do I, so. We could adopt, but we’ll never adopt, because we’re both psycho and they’ll never let us have a kid. Good thing, too, because we’ll fuck it up.”

“O-oh!” Dawn says.

“And also like, the law is supposed to be cool with gay people now - not yet now of course but in like twenty years - like we’re legally supposed to be allowed to adopt and do things like straight people, but the people who uphold the law aren’t as fair or undiscriminatory as what paper dictates.”

Gakushuu talks too much.

“But I can marry him now - in twenty years - and that counts for something. I’m not gay. I like girls too - I dated a girl once, who broke up with me because she thought I was gay. But I wasn’t, because I’m bisexual. I was just having a crush on my boyfriend who was not my boyfriend at the time because I was still dating the girl, and I thought I was being subtle about it but turns out I wasn’t, because the girl could tell, but she went out with me anyways because she wanted to make the guy she did like jealous. Which worked out well because they’re together now. Or was, or will be, I don’t know, it happened in high school. I don’t remember anything that happened in high school.”

Gakushuu needs to shut up.

“Except this one time when I ran away from home, but I didn’t really because I went to my boyfriend’s house for like two months-” okay, Gakushuu sees the dots connecting in his head, he hates alcohol. “-and his parents never come home because they’re out doing things. My parents were always home but they were insane, so we had conflicting issues where he saw not enough of them and I saw too much of mine. You’d think it balances out but it doesn’t. Well he wasn’t my boyfriend at the time yet, by the way, I just wanted him to be. Well not yet, it was after I lived with him that I wanted him to be. He was real messy and I hated it until one day he said, ‘hey, idiot, your dad isn’t here to yell at you if you leave a sock on the floor’ and I thought, he’s right! So when I moved back home I left socks on the floor all the time and neither of them yelled at me once! Because I guess they didn’t want me to run away from home again, but I didn’t like leaving socks on the floor so I started putting them back in the hamper again.”

“Sometimes I feel like they were never there for me, even though they always were, you know? The house was hardly ever empty but I always wished it was, because when I went to an empty house I felt like it was closer to home. And I always thought I did something wrong, you know? Especially when I found out they were much happier and more like normal people who would become great parents before they had me. I actually had a big brother but I never knew him, and he… ran away when I was four and I always thought they loved him better and they wanted him home instead of me. When I ran away from home they never looked for me and I thought that I was right, but they knew where I was that entire time because I apparently told them, and one day they came to pick me up and when I was in the car I realized I really miss them, because I was just pretending I liked the empty house better because my boyfriend was there. But I don’t want to live in an empty house anymore, and I don’t want him to live in one too, so I want to ask him to marry me and I want a baby, maybe two babies. And a dog. And a cat. Maybe three babies.”

Gakushuu’s head is swimming. Someone takes the ice cream vodka bowl away from him. He leans over and lies on someone’s shoulder. He’s not sure who it is.

“I’ll miss both of you when I go back home,” Gakushuu says. “I have to go back soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sober Gakushuu is always so subdued and polite like "I say no bad words because I have a reputation"/"I can be mean but only privately mean to a select few people who don't have guts/credibility to spread word of my meanness around". Headcanon that when he's shitfaced drunk he just loses his filter. No more fancy, well constructed sentences. It's free get-therapy-from-everyone-near-me. If you stay long enough he starts unpacking all his life psychoanalytic style. That's why he stays sober through all parties and people just think he's being professional.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gakushuu: Why don't I fake my death?  
> Prof: Remember the last time someone died?  
> Gakushuu: Right. RIP to Ikeda but I'm different - that's another meme, by the way. Besides, I'll just be speeding up the process, no biggie.  
> Prof:  
> Gakushuu: Yeah, you're right. Clearly the only other alternative instead of me dying is for everyone else I know to die instead.  
> Prof: What?

**1995**

"I am going back to Japan."

"I know," Gakuhou says, handing him a glass of water. "Are you still trying to get me to go back with you? I don't know about-"

"I meant like, in two days," Gakushuu says.

Gakuhou stills. He turns around to stare at Gakushuu, brows furrowed. "Why? Like… for the weekend, or-"

"Permanently," Gakushuu says. "I can't stay here anymore."

"What? So you're dropping out?!" Gakuhou sits down hard across him.."Are you serious?"

"Yes," Gakushuu says. "I booked a flight." 

"What? I don't understand," Gakuhou frowns. "Did I do something? Why are you-"

"My entire family died," Gakushuu says, cringing at the horrible excuse, and across him Gakuhou's jaw drops. "In… a house… fire. I have to… go back and handle all the proceedings."

"Oh my god," Gakuhou says, "oh my - I am so, so sorry." His face crumples and he looks genuinely devastated for Gakushuu, which makes him feel kind of guilty. "Last night you were talking all about- you never get drunk unless you're sad- I thought you were just being weird-"

Gakushuu takes offense to all three of those statements. 

"You look terrible!" Gakuhou says. "Did you get sleep last night?" 

"Sorry?" Gakushuu says, but his hangover dry throat makes it come out sore, and Gakuhou makes a cooing noise before pulling Gakushuu into his arms. Gakushuu mutters something about needing to freshen up and goes to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror.

He looks… wow, Gakuhou was right. He looks like a wreck. Did he cry last night? It looked like he did, in his sleep, maybe. At least he was selling his story with surprisingly minimal effort.

"Oh Shuu," Gakuhou wails when he emerges, clinging onto him like he's the one in mourning. "I'll get a farewell par- no, not a party. A gathering. We'll send you off."

"That's not really necessary," Gakushuu starts, but then he thinks that it'd be years and years before he truly sees any of them again and as ridiculous as it is, he does like his father's weird college friends. He wants to say bye to them as who he is now, instead of calling them up when they're all old and wrinkly in the future. Did they end up knowing he was a time traveller? Surely Gakuhou and Dawn told them… or not?

Gakuhou's already calling his friends. He might be sobbing. Gakushuu's a little touched. The whole group - Mark, John, Audrey, Alex - and they’re all also crying. Gakushuu thinks he’s actually going to miss them. 

“You don’t deserve any of this!” John wails. “The universe is unfair!”

“I’m gonna miss you, cuter version of Gakuhou!” Audrey cries. 

Even Dawn comes over, and there’s a little brief introduction with just a touch of awkwardness when she’s asked how she met them and Dawn says Gakushuu asked her out on a date, but they’re not together. Gakushuu doesn’t manage to keep a straight face through that conversation but luckily they think he;s just crying about his… entire family. 

He hopes Dawn and Gakuhou don’t remember the final details of this conversation and yell at Gakushuu for cursing their family name.

Gakushuu cooks for them one last time, all of them claiming varying furniture in the living room, Gakuhou sullenly says that this house is cleaner and homelier than it has ever been, and Gakushuu gets passed around like a party favor and everyone hugs him. 

“Guys…” Gakushuu says, “you’ll see me before you know it.”

“Y-yeah?” Mark says. He’s in a tee shirt, but it does not have a band name on it, which Gakushuu counts as a win. “Come back and visit?”

“I’ll come back to Harvard,” Gakushuu promises. In about 23 years, of course, but who’s counting?

“I’ll wait for you,” Gakuhou says, with a surprising amount of sincerity. Gakushuu turns to him, eyes wide. 

“Yeah,” Dawn adds, sounding a little surprised at herself when she says it. “Remember to come back, huh? Or we’ll have to go find you instead.”

Gakuhou, post graduation, had stayed in America for another year before returning to Japan, his girlfriend in tow. When Gakushuu was younger he entertained the thought of his father, one year older than his mother, waiting for her to graduate so they could go back together. Afterwards he figured that his father was just setting up contacts and establishing links for a better future, or that he just wanted to piss off his parents - Gakushuu’s grandparents, and got a nice American girlfriend instead of the quiet Japanese girl they no doubt wanted him to settle down with. 

Except now, Gakushuu thinks, Gakuhou was never really waiting for Dawn at all. They were both waiting for him… and well, he supposes they find him eventually, but never in the way either of them expect.

“I…” Gakushuu says. “Sure. I’ll hold you to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! This fic is ending soon! Yay! Yay?   
> I have a really fucking stupid fic idea coming up, I don't know what to say. For those of you who know, you know. For those who don't... you'll know. Soon. Hehehe.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy valentine's, everybody! <3 I love you all!

**1995**

Gakushuu tears apart his “computer”, stuffs his shitty crayon thesis into his messenger bag, packs way too many “souvenirs” from the past - kind of like a time capsule! - pulls on his special, soon-to-be vintage 1995 Harvard hoodie, and heads down to the lab. Professor Smith is already there.  “I got you a present,” Gakushuu sings. “This is a early model Nokia smartphone. Don’t call it a smartphone because it doesn’t exist. You can use it to surf the internet, check your email, hack into NASA, whatever your heart desires.”

“Gakushuu, did you hack into NASA?”

“No,” Gakushuu says. Prof squints at him. Gakushuu beams innocently.

“Why do I get the feeling you make that face every time I ask you a question with an answer that is most definitely yes?” Prof says, already sick of mentoring Gakushuu before he even started.

“Because I do,” Gakushuu says, “in other cases, but not necessarily this specific one.” 

“Right,” Prof says. “How was the farewell party?”

“It was less of a party and more of everybody crying in a circle,” Gakushuu says, “to be fair, I told them my ancestral line was dead and I was the last person carrying my family name. Which is technically true, because I’m pretty sure my father got disowned at some point - or my grandparents died, I don’t really know, family connections are iffy in my family like that - and my mother had no siblings.”

“Uh huh,” Prof says. 

“Yeah,” Gakushuu says. “Yes.” He coughs. “Are we doing this or what?”

They do final system checks, Gakushuu runs the simulation through his Nokia one more time, and then he crosses his fingers and then secures the duct tape over the machine - which he finds out is a very inexpensive way to make sure it doesn’t fall apart mid-time hop, thanks, high-him. Prof says, “you ready?” 

To which Gakushuu says, “nope.”

Then he flicks the switch.

**2022**

Gakushuu wakes up with a jolt and immediately hits his head on the underside of a metal table. He groans, rolls out of the way, and then contemplates his entire life and what brought him to this very fucking moment. He should go on a cleanse, he thinks, drink nothing but green juice and eat nothing but salads and acai bowls and grilled chicken. Maybe he should go to rehab, or take less subjects, or get some sleep once in a while. If he'd learnt anything from this, Gakushuu thinks, is that drugs were bad and that he should get rid of everything he has by selling it to some unsuspecting junior of his that would eventually learn the same lesson after going through a hallucinatory trip through the past and ending up in an unwitting love triangle between both his parents. 

Gakushuu looks down. Staring back at him is his Harvard 1995 hoodie. Fuck.

He has phone signal now, and his iphone displays the year 2022… but is it? He quickly googles “what is today’s date” - he’s a fucking genius - and yes! Yes! He’s fucking back.  He runs out of the lab like a madman and sprints down the hallways, and without knocking, bashes down the door to Prof Smith’s office. The man in question is lazily clicking through his laptop and he jumps two feet out of his chair. “God, Gakushuu!” He scolds, “you gave me a heart attack! Can’t you go home for summer break like normal people?!”

“Prof!” Gakushuu wails. 

And then Professor Smith looks at him, takes in his appearance and most importantly his hoodie, and he stands up. “It happened?!”

Gakushuu burst into what he much later adamantly argues are adrenaline induced tears. He goes around the table and hugs Prof, who awkwardly pats Gakushuu on the back as Gakushuu smothers him with unnecessary affection. “I can’t e-even!” Gakushuu blubbers, “begin to say anything! I can’t-! I-!”

“There there,” Prof says. “I’m giving you a month’s extension on your project, by the way, that was the most I could get for you from the directors’ board. And a flight ticket back to Japan because I figured you wouldn’t have the headspace for anything else.”

“Thank you! Thank you, thank you!” Gakushuu says. He rushes back into the apartment to do the quickest unpack-and-pack job he’d ever done, and he comes to a sudden, horrible realization.

His father had gotten this apartment for him 4 years ago. It’s the same fucking apartment.

Gakushuu hadn’t noticed it before, because all the infrastructure and landmarks around the building had changed drastically, the old road had been redirected for the highway and paved over, even the building got renovated. The apartment itself has been largely refurbished from the numerous times it must have changed hands in 27 years, but it’s the same fucking address.  “Oh my god,” Gakushuu says. “I hate him so much.” But he doesn’t really.

The plane ride goes in a blur - he spends the entire time on his laptop, frantically typing out not only his thesis but a journal entry log of everything he remembers happening, he’s a bundle of nerves when he touches down in Japan, and it takes only seeing the time to make a split second decision on his first destination.

Come on, it’s 3am in the morning. No matter how much he wants to see his parents now, he’s not waking up two old people in the middle of the night, that’s suicide.

“Karma!” Gakushuu’s hollering, the moment he manages to unlock the front door of his boyfriend’s house. “Karma! Karma! Kar-holy shit!”

Karma, standing in the middle of the doorway like a stalker, lowers a gun. “Gakushuu? What are you doing here?”

“Why do you have a gun?” Gakushuu says.

Karma doesn’t answer. “I thought you said you weren’t coming back for break?”

“I changed my mind,” Gakushuu says. He drops all his luggage and runs into Karma’s arms, who picks him up in such a tight hug that Gakushuu’s feet are lifted off the ground. He’ll die before he admits it to Karma, but he absolutely loves those hugs - it makes him feel small and safe like he’s a girl with a big strong boyfriend to cling to, and it’s one of the times he appreciates their height difference. He’ll die before he says that out loud, but he thinks Karma knows anyways.

“You smell like the airport,” Karma mumbles in his neck.

“Mhm,” Gakushuu says. 

“Go shower, weirdo,” Karma says. 

Gakushuu has a quick shower because he’s bouncing with nerves and bursting with the need to talk for hours and hours about every single fucking ridiculous thing that has ever happened to him, but he remembers it’s close to 4 in the morning when he steps out and see that Karma, try as he might to wait for Gakushuu, has already fallen back asleep. 

“Karma…” Gakushuu cajoles, but his boyfriend just grumbles and smacks Gakushuu in the face like an alarm clock, before dragging him onto the bed and pinning him under the sheets. Gakushuu hopes he doesn’t do that to his alarm clocks. 

“You’re thinking too loud,” Karma says. "Whatever you want to say can wait till the morning."

"It is morning," Gakushuu says, just to be a little shit, but he's exhausted too and Karma's right there, so they fall asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god you guys   
> [Alstroemeria_thoughts made a podfic of my fic Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22707844) and I am crying right now I can't BELIEVE-  
> I am very honored kljhgfdr you should definitely give it a listen 
> 
> For the occasion we have some awesome Karushuu content for all your vday needs,  
> [Some Twist of Fate by RikaNeedsCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22676830)  
> [When I was your age... by Anime_weeb](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22614952)   
> [Look At Me by NonHetaliaFicsForFriends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22562932)  
> and of course, the fics I've already written ;)
> 
> Jk HAHA I should post more soon, since this is coming to an end. Stay tuned!


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah yes, we are coming to an end! Well, not this chapter, I forsee one or two more before I can close this saga for good and start on something else. I do have a few fic idea in the works, some centering mah boi Shuu (yay) and some, well, not so much. I won't distract you for now, I'll leave them in the end notes hehe

**2022**

Gakushuu wakes up at… he doesn’t know what time it is. He loves sleeping with the windows open but Karma has his blinds down all the fucking time, Gakushuu is going to have to train that out of him before they move in together.  A quick glance at the alarm clock on Karma’s bedside shows that it’s 11 in the morning which, thank god, Gakushuu has things to do and he can’t sleep the day away. Karma’s already downstairs in the midst of preparing lunch, and he gives Gakushuu a peck on the lips.

“To what great pleasure to I owe an impromptu visit, my beloved?”

“I have so much to tell you,” Gakushuu says. “You won’t even believe what happened. I got hit by a bus-”

“What?!”

“-got propositioned into a threesome by both my parents-”

“WHAT?!”

“-and built a time machine,” Gakushuu proclaims. Pauses. “Not in that order.”

Then Karma’s right in front staring into his eyes with concern, cupping his face and frowning. “Are you high?”

“No!” Gakushuu laughs, but he doesn’t bat Karma’s hands away. He leans in, but Karma must be genuinely concerned because he ducks from Gakushuu’s affection and holds him at arm’s length to stare at him. Gakushuu pouts. 

“I made a time machine,” Gakushuu says. “See my hoodie? I went to the year 1995, which just so happened to be my father’s graduating year in Harvard. I became his college roommate. You know the movie Back to the Future?”

“What,” Karma says, “the fuck?”

Gakushuu sits him down. He has the shitty digital camera from the past and it’s accompanying pictures which he printed out in case modern technology decided to fail him in file conversion - but he already managed to export it to his laptop. He shows Karma his other spoils, including his messy thesis.

“This is Gakuhou in a sweater,” Gakushuu says. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen your father in a sweater in my  _ life _ ,” Karma marvels. 

“He’s 22,” Gakushuu says.

“You guys look like twins!” Karma says. “This is real, isn’t it? I mean,” he pulls on one of the brand new, authentic, vintage band shirts, the brand new cassette tapes, and a pager. “You actually made a time machine? Like an actual time machine? This isn’t photoshop? You aren’t fucking with me?”

“Prof Smith has it,” Gakushuu says. “I got an extension on my paper.”

Karma’s silent for a moment, sifting through the photographs. He pulls out one picture of Gakuhou and Gakushuu together, a primitive version of the selfie made worse by the lack of a front facing camera. Gakuhou looks confused in that one, like he’s about to ask why they couldn’t get someone else to help them snap the picture instead of what weird hand acrobatics Gakushuu was surely doing.

“I would fuck with you for a lot of things,” Gakushuu says. “But not this.” He shows a video of him and a younger version of Prof, shot on the iphone, of them messing around in the labs. “Fre sh avo cado,” Video-Gakushuu says.

“What the fuck?” Video-Prof says.

“Heh,” Karma snickers. Then, “did you say your parents  _ propositioned you into a threesome _ ?”

“Haha, the thing is,” Gakushuu says. 

“Hold the fuck on,” Karma says. “Let’s recap. You became your father’s roommate - and they were roommates kind of situation-”

“-oh my god, they were  _ roommates _ ,” Gakushuu says.

Karma smacks him. “And through that… several months together, your father - Gakuhou Asano,  _ your father _ , who I might add, your  _ dad _ -”

“You don’t have to keep saying it,” Gakushuu says. 

“-had a crush on you? Like, he likes guys? He liked  _ you _ ?”

“He  _ kissed _ me,” Gakushuu stresses. “On the  _ fucking _ lips. He KISSED ME!”

Karma screams. “How was it?!”

Gakushuu screams, too. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Was your dad a good kisser?!”

“Could you not fucking phrase it like that?!” Gakushuu shrieks. “I don’t know! I had so many other things on my mind other than evaluating his kissing technique!!!”

“Oh my god!” Karma throws a pillow from the couch into another room. There’s a faint sound of a crash. 

“I want to die!” Gakushuu wails. “He was flirting!”

“Was it good?!”

“No!!!” Gakushuu sobs. “I told him I had a boyfriend! I told him about us! No fucking wonder he knew! I outed myself before I was even born!”

“H-he,” Karma wheezes, breathless. “He kissed you!”

“I told him - both of them! About the time I ran away! That I went to my boyfriend’s house! Speaking of, my mom has pink hair! Her hair is Disney channel pink! Like Ariana Grande Red but pink!!!”

Karma’s crying incoherently into Gakushuu’s shirt. “He k-kissed you! L-like this!” He leans up, but he’s laughing too hard to kiss Gakushuu properly, and ends up half-on his lap, laughing his ass off. “I can’t believe-! The one thing I have in common with your d-dad! Is that we both think you’re cute! You gave him his own gay crisis!”

“I was in distress!” Gakushuu wails. “I had to matchmake both of them to ensure my birth! Like Back to the Future!”

“You can’t see this,” Karma says, face down in Gakushuu’s lap, “but I am crying right now. I have actual tears in my eyes.”

Gakushuu pats his hair. “So am I. I can’t believe they named me after their shared college crush.”

There’s a long pause of about 5 seconds, in which time Gakushuu briefly wonders if Karma has gotten an aneurysm and died on the spot, when suddenly his boyfriend starts convulsing in his lap. Gakushuu kicks him off, Karma rolls under the table and smacks his head against the legs, clutches his stomach, and starts bawling in laughter.

“You were n-n-named,” Karma says, “after your  _ ship name _ . Your dad was hella thirsty HOLY SHIT-”

“Stop!” Gakushuu shrieks.

“By t-that logic,” Karma yells, “we should name our kid Karushuu!”

They pause in their laughter simultaneously and stare at each other.

“Marry me?” Gakushuu says.

“Okay,” Karma says immediately.

There’s another pause.

“But I have to first go ask your dad,” Karma says, “if he’s going to let me  _ marry his college crush _ !”

Gakushuu screams into his hands. “That was the worst few months of my  _ life _ !”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! One/two more chapters to go! (If you want me to make it one chapter instead of two you should let me know my tomorrow HAHA)
> 
> Anyways, some fic ideas i have for the future:  
> The first one I actually planned was a fake dating Kayano x Gakushuu fic (yeah, yeah, I write too many nonsensical rarepairs BUT i love them? You'll see the potential okay) but my fic energy for that has stalled a little.  
> Wellll I wanted to write a chaotic Karahou fic in the same energy as the first one I posted (Not-date if you're interested) that features tons of Gakushuu and Irina because I love them. I'm not sure how that would go because I'm kind of lazy at the moment with it.
> 
> And the main Reason I'm less motivated for these two above fics is because I'm currently excited about this NEWEST idea (which I thought about like 2 days ago) where it's the whole middle school 3rd year again, from the top. How's that interesting, you may ask, why, gwen, why?  
> But hear this: it's from the perspective of the main campus.  
> How is THAT interesting, you ask again? They're a bunch of bullies and losers. You have written Gakushuu mildly interesting so far but the whole main campus? No way. No way.  
> But hear this, again: but what if? they know. They _Know._


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today we laugh at Gakuhou and all his mistakes.

**2022**

Gakushuu has so much to say, hours, days, months and  _ years  _ worth of emotions to spill out, so many words building up all inside of him threatening to burst forth. When he sees Gakuhou standing across him, a hand on the door and his face perplexed, Gakushuu's mind - the millions of things he wants to yell, every gear that's turning in his brain - runs blank.

Instead what comes out is, "Karma and I are engaged." 

Gakuhou stares at him, and slowly looks him up and down - Karma's sweatpants, the 1995 Harvard hoodie, the luggage he's dragging behind him.

Then, "you named me after your college crush-"

"I have been dreading this conversation since you were sixteen." 

“Dad-”

“No, don’t talk to me,” his father says. He swiftly turns around and Gakushuu follows after him, bemused, and watches his father make a beeline to the kitchen and start rummaging through the cabinets. 

“What are you looking for?” Gakushuu says. He observes the whole kitchen with a new appreciation, things were almost exactly how they were kept since their college days. Apparently once his parents struck up a routine, they kept at it.  His father doesn’t answer him. Hah, petty old man. Instead Gakushuu rolls his eyes and heads up to his room, sets his luggage aside, then wanders down the hallway.

His mother is lounging in the chaise in the green room, head buried in a book. She doesn’t bother to look up. “Gakuhou, why do I hear you tearing apart the kitchen?”

“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me,” Gakushuu says. 

His mother looks up in surprise. It’s hard and hilarious to imagine her as a teen with bright pink hair even though Gakushuu has the receipts. “Hi mom.”

“Oh honey! You didn’t tell us you were coming back!” She says, “I thought you were staying over to finish your thesis!”

“I got an extension,” Gakushuu says. “I came back to visit.” He’s wearing the hoodie. He’s wearing the hoodie right now. Can she say something and spare him the awkwardness of bringing it up? He’d just blurted it out with his father and he didn’t quite have the time to process the sheer humiliation of it.

“Oh!” She smiles pleasantly, “how very nice. Did you-”

Oh, fuck it, rip it out like a band-aid. “I can’t believe you propositioned me into a threesome with dad.”

Fuck.

His mother shrieks. She throws the book at him, he catches it, then she throws a pillow and shrieks again. Gakushuu laughs, high and loud, and his mother darts out of her chaise and past Gakushuu with a bright red face. 

“Gakuhou!!!” She screams, running down the hallway, seeking reinforcements from her husband as they both avoid their son. Gakushuu sets the book on the table and listens to harmony of both his parents freaking out in unison on the ground floor. Ah, he’s glad to be home. 

When he’s back down, his mother is sobbing on the couch. “T-t-there’s a box in the attic,” she says, “labelled T-t-Tanaka. Please bring it down.”

Gakushuu raises an eyebrow. “I-”

His mother bawls harder. “Don’t talk to me! I can’t look at you!”

“Sure,” Gakushuu says. His father’s still ignoring him, and it looks like he’s going through the alcohol cabinet. 

He gets his 1995 time capsule along with the Tanaka box - how innocuously labelled, and smart, he thinks. He walks past the kitchen on his way to the living room, stops in the doorway, and watches his father steadily empty a bottle of the good whiskey into an industrial sized bowl of punch. 

“It’s a habit I picked out from...” he starts, then his voice trails off and blushes slightly pink. Gakushuu is elated. “Go away, brat.”

“Don’t break your leg carrying it, old man,” Gakushuu teases.

His father scowls at him, but his eyes flick briefly to Gakushuu’s left leg. Gakushuu smiles at him. “It’s fine, it healed months ago.”

“You’re an idiot,” his father grumbles. In the living room, his mother is sprawled over the couch like a 14th century Victorian baroness, and she covers a hand with her eyes in such a way that seemed  _ rich _ with how she did it, a far leap from 21 year old Dawn who wore tank tops and drank out of red solo cups.

“I am not having this conversation sober,” she says. There’s a ladle with the punch bowl like they’re in a frat house, but she tips the drink into a wine glass all the way to the brim, and then immediately downs all it. And pours another.

“How long have you been drinking?” His father says.

“Me?” Gakushuu says.

“Yes,” his father frowns at him. “How long? How much do you drink? You’re an alcoholic.”

“Mom’s an alcoholic,” Gakushuu points out. Across the pair, she’s tipping back her third glass of concoction. 

“You got into a car accident.”

“I wasn’t drunk driving! And I don’t even drink that much.”

“Uh huh,” his father says.

“You can’t lecture me on drinking when we’re literally about to get wasted as a family at two in the afternoon.”

“We need to have this conversation like adults,” his father says firmly. “Inebriated so I’m not sober enough to not tell you the truth.”

“Seconded,” Gakushuu says. He takes a sip of the drink. It takes like embarrassing family secrets and blackmail material.  “So,” he starts, “first things first.” He turns to his father. “You like boys!”

“Why is that the first fucking thing you have to talk about!” His father whacks him on the shoulder. “I’m not drunk enough for that! Something else!”

“Okay, okay!” Gakushuu relents. “Do the others know? You know, your friends?’

“Of course not!” His father says. “They’ll think we’re insane!”

“How would we even begin to broach the subject?” His mother wails. “Hey, remember Gakuhou’s roommate in his last year of college? Turns out it’s his son from the future!”

“I’m lucky there weren’t face-merge apps in the 90s,” Gakushuu says, “or I’d never have pulled it off.” He pauses. “Can I tell them?” 

“Oh my god,” his father says, burying his face in his hands. What an oddly human action that Kunugigaoka Middle School’s Principal would have never been caught dead doing. Old age, alcohol and dredging up his teen years really loosens one up.

“That’s a yes,” his mother translates, “even though he wants to be nowhere near while you do it.” 

She’s more willing to talk, given that it’s mostly her husband’s deepest shames she’s spilling and not her own, so Gakushuu turns to her eagerly. Gakushuu’s family was the very definition of every man for themselves. “Did they know about the crush?”

His father lets out a longer-drawn groan, and his mother cackles. “Oh,  _ everyone _ knew, honey! He is not  _ subtle _ !”

“They knew  _ nothing _ ,” his father hisses.

“Oh dear, you waited an entire fucking  _ year _ for him, if they didn’t know then they figured it out because boy you were  _ smitten _ !” She chortles, “Baby he was  _ whipped _ for you before you were born and that’s how I knew there was  _ nothing _ your papa wouldn’t do for you!”

“Aww,” Gakushuu says, “Papa loves me!” And Papa smacks him in the face with a pillow.

“Whose idea was it to name me?” Gakushuu asks, delighted.

“It was kind of an equal trade off,” she says. “You changed our lives, baby boy. You made me fall in love with and marry a stupid idiot who thought about another guy half the time we were dating.”

“It was one stupid crush!” His father yells then. “I got over it in three months and eleven days!”

“After you left,” his mother tacks on.

“I want a divorce.”

“Well,” she says with a shit-eating grin that only four glasses of vacation juice could give her. “Your lover’s here.”

“Argh!” 

Gakushuu giggles. “Whatever,” he says, leaning against his father’s side and miraculously doesn’t get kicked off. “Are you drunk enough to talk about all the reasons you love me?”

“No.”

“I’ll try again later,” Gakushuu pats his shoulder commiseratingly. “When did you guys find out?”

“Oh,” his mother says. She sounds a little bit sadder. “When you… left, when you were sixteen. I remember it so clearly, I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life.”

Gakushuu blinks quickly, suddenly sober. “Mom…”

“Your father tore up the attic, I didn’t know why he was up there-”

“I wanted to see if you took anything from the toy chest from when you were a child,” his father said. “You locked everything up there because you thought it was childish to still keep around in your bedroom. If you took anything from it, you weren’t coming back.”

“I almost did,” Gakushuu recalls. “But I didn’t want to drag a toy around when I didn’t know where I would be going.”

His father squeezes him to his chest. Gakushuu feels like a little kid again.

You know, aside from the alcohol everywhere. 

“We saw the box,” his mother continues, “he - well, you said you ran away before. To your boyfriend’s.” 

“We hid out in Akabane’s backyard,” his father says. “That was awful.”

“When I saw you inside,” his mother says, “I felt so relieved, I couldn’t believe that Shuu Tanaka helped us again for so long after he was gone-”

“We thought you died,” his father says abruptly. “We - I - tried finding you.”

“-and we pulled out all the things,” she says. “It’s not a lot. There’s some stuff of yours you never took back with you. There are some knickknacks in there, things that looked important.”

“I got it from a thrift store so it looked like I had a life,” Gakushuu laughs. He sets the box out onto the coffee table and pulls out a thirty year old glass ornament. “I can’t believe you kept it.”

“The photographs!” His mother laughs. “I thought I was having a heart attack!”

“I’m pretty sure I did have one,” his father laments. 

“It had been so long I barely remembered what you looked like or spoke like,” his mother says. “When I saw those pictures, I mean, I’d know you anywhere, honey!”

“The cooking,” His father says, “the cleaning, the filing, even the way you shelve books! There was no way.  _ No  _ way.”

“Why did you even go to Karma’s?!” Gakushuu realizes with a start. “We weren’t dating back then, we were barely even friends!”

“Passion begets passion, honey!” His mother crows. “You were as subtle as your father! Fell in love the same way too!” 

“Dawn!” His father scolds.

“Hold on, yeah!” Gakushuu beams. “It was after the fight we had that you-”

“I am  _ begging _ the both of you to shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mayybeee one more chapter? Two? I don't know.
> 
> An excerpt of Kunugigaoka Knows (give me a better title please):
>
>> “I don’t know, but that is her,” Watanabe insists. “She’s probably wearing a wig or something.”  
> “You’re delusional.”  
> “I’m not! I’d recognize Haruna anywhere.”  
> “First of all, there is no way you would recognize Haruna just like that. You wouldn’t know if Haruna walked past you on the street. Second of all-”  
> “I run a Haruna Mase twitter stan account.”  
> “... _Excuse me_?”


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to extend this fic by one more chapter because I have things to write, Gakuhous to torment, you know, the sort.

**2022**

"I can't believe I'm marrying into this family."

"Baby!" Gakushuu perks up. His boyfriend - fiance! is standing over him, arms crossed, trying his best to look irritated but instead looks halfway through constipated and like he's trying not to laugh. 

"Go away," someone rumbles. It's Father. He's on the other couch, a hand slung across his eyes and legs dangling over the side of the armrest. Mother is on top of him, dead asleep. 

"Hey pops," Karma says, "did Shuu tell you we were engaged?"

"I wish I expelled you," his father says. 

"Why are you here?" Gakushuu says. He kicks Karma in the leg a little, and Karma whacks him with a pillow.

"Someone drunk dialed me," Karma says. "Do you want to guess who?"

"Is it Mom?"

"Guess again."

"...Dad?"

"Gakushuu, do you think your father would drunk dial me?"

"Maybe?"

"God, you're an idiot," Karma says affectionately. He pats Gakushuu's hair twice, and Gakushuu preens at the attention.

"Go flirt somewhere else!" Father yells. 

"Are you  _ jealous _ ?" Karma says. God,  _ he's  _ such an idiot, his father is never going to let Gakushuu marry him after this. 

There's a chilling pause as his father stays silent, evaluating the statement which must mean that not only did Gakushuu already told Karma about the whole time travel escapade, he told Karma before his parents  _ and  _ he apparently spared no details.

"I'll fucking kill you," Father says. It's not really clear which one of them he's addressing, but they're not taking any chances. His inebrierated state and sleeping wife would hinder his chances of murder and give the two the opportunity to get away.

"Come on," Karma says quickly, and plucks Gakushuu off the couch bridal style. Gakushuu giggles into Karma's neck, arm slung around his shoulder. 

They make it up the stairs in record time.

"Your room looks the same,” Karma says.

Gakushuu giggles. “I’m sleepy.”

“Then go to sleep, idiot,” Karma says. “Now that I know you’re not dead, I have stuff to get done.”

“Nooo,” Gakushuu says.

“I’ll come by for dinner to feed the three of you, how’s that,” Karma says. “I have errands to run."

"Ugh," Gakushuu says.

Karma kisses him on the forehead. "See you later." Gakushuu glares at his retreating back, lies in the middle of his empty and sad bed for a while, then decides he wants to cuddle and that he's still in the drunk enough stage to shamelessly admit it. He goes back downstairs and gets a drink of water, and then goes to the living room and nudges his parents. "Wake up."

"Go away, brat," his father says.

"Let's go upstairs," Gakushuu says. "I wanna cuddle."

"How old are you?" His father grumbles.

"Da-ad," Gakushuu says.

"Ugh," Father says says. "Dawn, get up."

His mother, who’s apparently never been asleep this entire while, rolls over. “No.”

“Your son is being needy again.”

“Oh so when he’s being needy he’s  _ my _ son?” His mother complains. “Need I remind you that between the both of us,  _ you _ are the clingy one-”

“Ugh,” his father says again. 

Against all odds, the three drunk people make it upstairs without incident. Gakushuu jumps into his parents’ bed like a child, but then pauses and cringes when it lets out a long, ominous screech. “This bed is old like the both of you,” he says.

“I’m not even 50!” Mother wails. “And I already have grey hairs! I’m old, Gakuhou, I’m  _ old _ !”

“I liked it when you have pink hair,” Gakushuu offers. “If you get pink hair, you’ll look young again.”

“Don’t remind me of my teenage woes!” Mother says. She flops down on the bed and Gakushuu gets down next to her. She pats him on the shoulder. “God, I remember when you were tiny! You’re all grown up now! You’re a grown man!”

“Physically, maybe,” Father grumbles. “He’s still an immature brat.”

“You didn’t seem to mind,” Gakushuu says, “you were plenty immature when you were 22 too, need I remind you, and you can’t deny it. I was there and I remember it like it was yesterday.”

Father lays down next to him and lets out a restless sigh. Squished between his parents, Gakushuu lets himself close his eyes, but despite their physical proximity all three of them are awkwardly stiff and unsure of themselves, and the atmosphere grows equally so.

“I don’t think we’ve done this since you were a kid,” Mother says.

“That’s not true,” Gakushuu says immediately. “We did this in 1995 when the both of you were trying to get into my pants.”

There’s a long pause, and then Father says, “you’re going to hold this over my head forever, aren’t you.”

“Yep,” Gakushuu says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! If you've been on my dashboard recently you would have seen the news but if you haven't, I posted the first chapter of the stupid Kunugigaoka Knows crackfic. If you would like to you can check it out! I have one more chapter of this fic to go too so if you don't feel like hopping over, you can see me one more time here HAHA


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done. It's DONE! 35 chapters.

**2022**

They get better at being tactile, eventually, as they simultaneously navigate the space as a family who’s learning to be a family in all the wrong orders. Gakushuu kisses his father once - on the cheek, mind you! - as a joke, and he got his ass kicked to kingdom come. Karma wouldn’t stop laughing and said he deserved it as he held an ice back to Gakushuu’s black eye.

“I can’t believe you got your ass handed to you by your dad,” Karma says.

“I am  _ recuperating _ from a broken leg,” Gakushuu says. “That was only a month ago, technically.”

“I can’t believe you got your ass handed to you by a  _ fifty year old man _ .”

“Oh, shut up!”

Technically, Gakushuu taught him those fight moves in some way or another. He deserves to be proud, even if that’s not the type of tactile this family needs to get. His father is appropriately apologetic about it, which means he berates Gakushuu for not defending himself fast enough and keeping up with his training, and Gakushuu points out his broken leg, hello, and his father says “if you weren’t an idiot, you would never have broken your leg.”

“My broken leg was the reason I was born!” Gakushuu says.

“God, I wish you weren’t,” his father says dramatically.

“Remember when I told you that you would regret flirting with me in thirty years and you said that whatever decision you made that leads us to still be together in thirty years was a good one?”

“I want to disown you.”

“I’m going back to Harvard tomorrow.”

“Go back faster.”

Gakushuu does. He has his thesis to work on, after all, and so much on top of that because he has an actual time travel device on his hands, holy fuck. He fine tunes the settings and then cuts a wire so it doesn’t cause anymore surprise trips, submits his thesis and a patent, and then has a break of approximately 2 days before the shitshow starts. He gets called into first a university faculty board meeting, then a university Deans board meeting, then a physics panel so he could be cross-drilled on the science and mechanics of the device, a UN panel so he could be cross-drilled on the political and social anarchy a time travel device could cause - higher on the scale than on the Koro-sensei 2015 incident, it seems. 

Then Gakushuu says, “I honestly don’t care what happens to it as long as I never see it again.”

The President of the United States says, “what?”

Gakushuu tacks on, “respectfully, sir.”

They confiscate the device “for the good of the world” and make him sign so many forms his wrist ache. Gakushuu would have smashed it up with a hammer for the good of the world, but he needed to submit his assignment. Which Prof Smith lets him know he got a full score for and honestly, if he didn’t get that full score? He would cause the next wave of anarchy the world is supposedly worried about.

For the same reason, of course, everything is kept on the down low. Gakushuu would never officially get credit for his research - even his thesis is redacted - but that means he lives the rest of his life unburdened by the strings that come attached to a device with time manipulation properties, or being the brain that built one. It’s a small price to pay.

So after everything, after  _ everything _ that happens, after the whirlwind of administration and policies and meeting too many famous people for even his taste, Gakushuu has several calls to make.

His first call is to his fiance. “I invited the worlds’ leaders to our wedding.”

There’s a pause on the line. “Are they coming?”

“We have to get our schedule out first,” Gakushuu says, “but I have a preemptive yes from the current President of the United States, Japan’s foreign affairs minister and the florist from the white house. Did you get my flowers?”

“You sent me express shipping international flowers,” Karma says. “Yes, I got them, they were lovely.”

“Were they still fresh?”

“They’re as fresh as they can be,” Karma says. “How is the Pentagon?”

“I’m told this call is being monitored by five different people, including the director of the FBI. Hi, Miguel.”

There’s a pause. Nothing happens.

“Cool,” Karma says. “Don’t get assassinated.”

His second call is to his parents, and his mother sobs over the line for half an hour, and his father simply says “come home” before hanging up. It’s an admission of familial love if anything, and Gakushuu’s never felt closer to the two of them.

His third call is to John, because he’d managed to schedule it the quickest. His father starts the call with a resigned look on his face, because it would be odd for a son to request to talk to his father’s college friends, wouldn’t it? Unless they were his college friends too.

“Nice to hear from you, Gakuhou, you’re looking great,” John says, “what brings you to call?”

To his credit, his father doesn’t beat around the bush, although that can be attributed to his want to get over this mortifying experience as soon as possible “It’s more an admission of guilt than anything,” he says, in the tone of voice where one would confess to a murder. “You remember my son, Gakushuu?”

“Oh,” John says, “yes! He got into Harvard, right? How is he doing?”

“Well,” his father says.

Gakushuu takes his cue to appear in the video call. “Hi, uncle John,” he says. It sounds a little awkward to his ears, and it is, but he vaguely remembers talking to John as a child and that was how he addressed him.

“John is fine,” John says. “How have you been?”

“I recently found out the story of my namesake,” Gakushuu says, unable to keep the grin of his face. Next to him, his father groans, and Gakushuu squeezes in the chair halfway on his lap. It’s a large chair anyways.

“Oh?” John says. “Gakuhou, you never told him until now?” 

“There was never the opportunity to,” his father mumbles.

“Or, you were embarrassed,” Gakushuu teases, and gets smacked in the back of his head for his efforts.

John watches them in amusement and then says, “you told him everything about his namesake, then?  _ Everything? _ ”

His father buries his face in his hands and says something like “don’t do this to me”. John and Gakushuu pretend not to have heard. 

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about!” John laughs. “Oh, Gakushuu, I honestly wish you could have seen the guy. I know you know your father is some hotshot CEO kind of character but a teenager with a crush is a whole other thing, I have to tell you. Shuu turned him into putty.”

“Yeah?” Gakushuu says eagerly. He knew all this already, but it’s ever the more hilarious coming from someone else’s mouth.

“I myself liked Shuu for a bit,” John says, “he was attractive, and smart, and funny, but of course i would never approach him like that. When your father came to me about his feelings for Shuu, I told him to go for it-”

“Wait,” Gakushuu says, growing increasingly delighted for each word that came out of John’s mouth. “Dad  _ told you _ about his crush?”

“Oh my god,” his father says. He tries to push Gakushuu off the chair so he could make his escape, but Gakushuu keeps him pinned. 

“Well, he knew I had one too, I wasn’t subtle,” John says. “It was just after… well Shuu and your father had this big fight at one point, I don’t remember what it was about, but your father came out to me and admitted he liked him. I genuinely thought he had a chance, I thought Shuu was a little bit bent as well, if I’m being honest, but turns out he wasn’t interested, and a month after that your father met your mother.”

“That’s awesome,” Gakushuu giggles.

“You know, I don’t think we ever did find out what happened to him, did we,” John says. “He disappeared just before graduation, came back to Japan-”

“We did,” his father says quickly. His face is so red it looks like Karma’s hair, Gakushuu almost feels bad. Almost.

“What?” John leans forward. “Really? Holy shit! What happened?”

“I did,” Gakushuu says. He shouldn’t be too hard on his father, after all, he’s bankrolling his wedding. “I’m Shuu Tanaka. I built a time machine and I traveled back in time.”

John stares at him, then looks at Gakuhou. “What.”

Gakushuu pulls up his hoodie a little. Harvard 1995 isn’t the best indicator of time travel, but it is a really nice hoodie. “See?”

John blinks. “This is a joke.” He says.

“Would I play this fucking stupid joke if this was one?!” His father snaps then, blushing furiously. “I kissed my son, Adelbury! I came onto him like a fucking- let go of me, brat!”

“Nah!” Gakushuu says. He beams at John and wriggles further into his father’s chest. “Don’t we look alike?”

“I…” John says. “Hold on. Hold the frick on.”

“I have a patent published,” Gakushuu says. “It’s not under my name, it’s under Shuu Tanaka’s! It'd never be made public, of course, or I would die the instant I stepped out of the house. I got a job offer from NASA! I taught you all how to clean and cook and shelve books! You, Mark and Audrey found me asleep on a park bench. I wasn't drunk, I was time-travel woozy.”

“Oh my god,” John says. “Oh my god. You are being serious right now?”

“I’ll send you some pictures,” Gakushuu says. “We went shopping, Mark owned too many Nirvana shirts, we made cookies and I got hit by a bus. You’ll remember.”

John does. He laughs for 10 minutes. “Have you told the others?!” He says between his tears.

“You’re the first one,” Gakushuu says. “We’ll call them soon.”

“I think you killed Gakuhou,” John says.

His father in question was long dead. He has his head on the table.

“Probably,” Gakushuu says. They exchange a few more pleasantries before Gakushuu ends the call, and then he pokes his father in the cheek. "It's over now."

"You're a conniving, cruel child," Father says.

"Learnt it from the best," Gakushuu says. He shifts so he can lay his head on the table too, looking brightly into his father's eyes as he glares back. It reminds Gakushuu of the time they were on the kitchen floor after their fight.  His father must be thinking the same thing too, or there's something melancholy in the air, he reaches a hand up and strokes Gakushuu's hair.

"...Dad," Gakushuu says softly.

His father hesitates. "You know… I…"

"I know," Gakushuu says. 

His father curls a hand at his cheek. "When I found out… I want you to know it didn't change anything, I didn't…" he pauses, "I left Tanaka in the past. I won't deny I ever liked him, he changed my life, but I never looked for him in you."

"Never did you think it was me?"

"You are not him," Father says, but it's not malicious. "Not to me. I perceive both of you very differently. I can acknowledge both of you as the same… physical being, but you and Tanaka are not the same person, in essence. It would be very uncomfortable if it was."

"You liked him," Gakushuu giggles.

His father sighs. "I did."

"Mom did, too," Gakushuu says. "I think you two had an instinctual connection to me, or the comfortable way I acted around you two influenced that, at least. The most logical way to rationalize the feelings was a crush. You just spent more time with me." 

"Perhaps," his father says. There's a tiny smile on his face. Gakushuu smiles back, and earns a hair ruffle. 

"In your mother's words," his father says, "you're my… baby. You're my son. That would always come first."

"Even if I remind you of Tanaka?" Gakushuu says.

"I named you after him," his father says. "You were always going to remind me of him.”

“‘S kinda weird,” Gakushuu says. “To think I changed your life almost the same way you did mine.”

His father rolls his eyes. “You’re stupid to think that my life didn’t change the moment you were born. I always knew you were going to lead me through hell and back, you just happened to do it all out of order.”

Gakushuu giggles. “So can we watch Back To The Future?”

“Absolutely not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done!   
> Just a quick note, I have Kunugigaoka Knows (the fic where I have the main campus know everything about 3E because they're smart) out now, but I have to admit it starts off slow while they figure things out. I always have fucking weird content coming out so you can click through my name every once in a while if you're interested, I guess? See everyone soon!

**Author's Note:**

> And here we have it, whatever this is, the beginning of a new adventure (and the middle, and the end, time is relative and unimportant.) Let me know what you think!


End file.
